Take out your wallet and count the number of cards you carry, not to mention all the Personal Identification Numbers (PINs) that you have to memorize for every possible transaction.
Then there is your passport, driver's license, insurance documents, not to mention details like home and work addresses, phone and fax numbers.
All that information, says BT Laboratories' Peter Cochrane, can be put into a single silicon chip on a smart card. Everything from employment and medical records to financial status can be written into the chip. Add a short-range wireless transmitter-receiver, implant the whole thing under your skin, and you have a personal transponder, just like those in airplanes.
A chip like that can give you total freedom, according to Professor Cochrane. You walk into an airport and clear Customs and Immigrations in minutes because all your personal information will be processed by computers instead of humans. Since all your financial information is also in the chip, you can simply walk up to an ATM machine in any country and withdraw money as and when you need it.
Even grocery-shopping could be easier. Just walk into a store and pick up whatever you want to buy. No more queues at the cashier's counter.
All this could be reality in a few years time.