Microchips Now In Tombstones, Toilets, & Fish Lures 83
Hugh Pickens writes "Steve Johnson writes in the Mercury News that microchips are going into a staggering array of once decidedly low-tech items — from gravestone markers and running shoes to fish lures and writing pens. In the future, 'where won't we find chips?' asks analyst Jordan Selburn. 'The answer is pretty close to nowhere.' For example, one company sells a coin-size, stainless steel-encased microchip for gravestone markers that tells the dead person's story in text, photos, video or audio histories, which visitors can access by pointing their Internet-enabled cell phones at it. The company says it has sold thousands of 'Memory Medallions.' There's AquaOne Technologies, who sell a toilet containing chips that automatically shut off the water when it springs a leak or starts to overflow, but Japanese company Toto goes one better with an intelligent toilet that gathers health-related data from the user's urine. Pro-Troll puts a chip in its fish lures that 'duplicates the electrical nerve discharge of a wounded bait fish,' prompting other fish to bite it."
Gravestone one is not a microchip (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What Constitutes a "Chip"? (Score:4, Informative)
No I think you're completely right in exactly what these things do, and to better answer your question, I believe the public view of what a "Chip" is - is anything that has circuitry so tiny its difficult or near impossible to see. Not that there has to be any actually computing take place.