Pause Fest launches 2018 festival by injecting participants with tiny microchips

What does a business card, an access card, or your house keys all have in common? They’d be way cooler embedded as a tiny microchip just under your thumb rather than jangling around in your pockets.

This, at least, was the mindset of around nine members of the media, social influencers, and Pause Fest devotees at the annual creative tech conference launch in Melbourne on Wednesday, with each one receiving an on-site implant of an injectable microchip.

About the size of a grain of rice, these chips are near field communication (NFC) enabled and hold just under one kilobyte of data. Not enough space for your startup’s manifesto, but enough to fit in contact details, a website link, or a few lines of code.

“Today we’re launching the Pause Fest program, and as part of that, we’ve invited some people to inject some VIP tickets,” Pause Fest founder George Hedon told attendees.

Resident “injectable expert” and Melbourne University PhD student Kayla Heffernan also attended the event and provided some information on the microchips and the use of injectables as an emerging technology. Read more

Dominic Powell - Smart Company - 3 Nov 2017