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As someone who has turned microchipping himself into a hobby,
Amal Graafstra is a pioneer of so-called DIY implantation.
Graafstra implanted himself with two radio-frequency identification
tags (RFIDs), similar to the sort of chips used in cats and dogs,
five years ago.
The procedure was simple. The American IT department head bought
the chips himself from a commercial outlet and a cosmetic surgeon
inserted one through a scalpel cut in his left hand in March
2005.
His family doctor used a pet injector to insert the second one in
his right hand later that year.
Unlike others who have implanted themselves for research,
Graafstra, who was in Australia to address an international
technology symposium at the University of Wollongong, says he did
it for his own convenience.
The chips help him do things like open the door to his home, log
onto his computer and start his motorbike.
"I have the skill to be able to utilise this technology in my daily
life," he says.
"It was basically a key replacement first and foremost."
However, he admits he has been a ground-breaker.
"Pets have been getting implants of the same nature for many
years," he says.
"But in the non-commercial, private DIY space I'm the first person
I know of who has used the technology in this way.
"This is kind of a do-it-yourself guerrilla-style approach to the
technology."
Graafstra doesn't consider himself a cyborg, electrophorus or even
homo electronicus - all terms that have been used to describe the
new, microchipped breed of human.
However he says these terms all describe a future that humans are
hurtling towards.
"I do not consider myself a cyborg because a cyborg is somebody
that actually has a technological interface, something that
interacts with the body like a pacemaker, or a cochlear implant,"
he says.
"All I've done is move the RFID tag from my wallet, or my pants
pocket, to a skin pocket."
He prefers to describe himself as "an adventurous hobbyist" and
"just a regular dude".
And says he is no longer alone.
"When it got out on the news ... several people contacted me and we
started forming a little group and you can find people on YouTube
having this procedure done."
Several Australians are among those to have embraced the
technology, he says.
The field of human implantation isn't without risk, says British
scientist Mark Gasson, who has been billed as the first person in
the world to catch a computer virus.
Gasson, also in Australia for the conference, had an RFID-based
implant put in his hand about a year ago, originally for access to
his UK-based lab and mobile phone.
Later, as an experiment, he deliberately infected the chip with a
virus and found he was able to pass the infection on to the
laboratory's security system.
"If we're talking about an attack on the (implantable) technology,
like a computer virus, then we can start to talk about the person
being infected by a computer virus," he says.
"We've shown that we can actually transmit a computer virus to the
chip and use that to infect the security access database in our
laboratory."
It could also work the other way around, with a virus in a data
system being transmitted to the wearer of an implant.
Gasson says this raises serious issues, especially with regard to
implantable medical devices on which peoples' lives may
depend.
He described the experience of carrying a computer virus as
"extremely violating".
"It's completely out of your control," he says.
"It's a device that's in your body, you can't just leave it on your
desk and come back the next day to sort the problem out.
"I knew that I could walk around the building and potentially
transmit this piece of malicious code back into the
building."
Like Graafstra, Gasson doesn't consider himself a cyborg, though he
admits "technically I probably should".
He says carrying the implant feels like a natural evolution.
"It's not like something in me has radically changed," he
says.
"I don't feel it's changed me as a person, it hasn't changed my
sense of self.
"It's added a new dimension and a new set of experiences to my
life."
