We all have been there; the plight of being already late from the office, barely making it for the last bus for the next half hour and then realizing that you forgot your public transit card at home! Might as well call the boss and take a day off since there’s no point in continuing the already horrific day.
But Meow-Ludo Disco Gamma Meow-Meow, the founder of citizen scientist lab Biofoundry and an Australian molecular biologist had enough of the ordeal, so he literally took matters into his own hands and has proposed a unique solution to the problem.
Mr. Meow-Meow has turned the Australian Opal card — a similar concept to London’s Oyster card — into an NFC chip and had it implanted beneath the skin of his left hand encased in a bio-compatible plastic with the help of a professional piercer. The NFC chip uses electromagnetic radio waves to connect two objects within close distances, in Meow-Meow’s case as close as within one centimeter, for the chip to scan.
Our friend is running for the Australian Science Party and is a fellow biohacker! https://t.co/fo1ioaypWY
— BioLogik (@BioLogikLabs) June 17, 2016
While this is closer than you need to place the actual card due to the smaller antennae of his chip and you might even need to make multiple attempts before the machine reads the chip, it still is a godsend when compared to the hassle of keeping the card on you at all times.
Meow-Meow spoke to ABC News Australia about his new chip,
“My goal is to have frictionless interaction with technology,” said Meow-Meow. “It gives me an ability that not everyone else has, so if someone stole my wallet I could still get home.”
The Australian biohacker was quick to note that the technology is akin to pacemakers and birth control devices we already have implanted inside our bodies, and we will notice a merger of our bodies and technology much more frequently in the future.
Meow-Meow also ran for the Science Party in the 2016 Australian federal election, and while he didn’t win, the campaign served as a great advertiser for the inventor
“Meow is a passionate molecular biologist, entrepreneur, and futurist. He believes that the major challenges facing the world currently are solvable through scientific research combined with technological action,” the Science Party noted. “He is heavily involved in the democratisation of science through his work in co-creating a network of internationally connected biohackers and physical community laboratories.”
Meow has some very ambitious plans as evident from his desire to make people immortal just a few years back,
“Live forever, or die trying. Personally my goal is to achieve escape velocity – that is to increase life expectancy by more than a year per year,” Meow-Meow told ABC News last October. “Once you can get to that you are functionally immortal.”
By the looks of it, this is just the beginning for Meow-Meow, and with his vision and dedication, we might actually have a shot at seeing his plans materialize right before our eyes.
