NTT turns flesh into keycard

If you work in a Japanese office, don’t be surprised if smelly old “shacho” starts telling you about his amazing Firmo sometime soon. Fortunately, it’s not what you think — thank God. Firmo is, in fact, the brand name NTT has just given to its office door-access system that uses human skin as a kind of key. Eew, and that’s better?

Anyway, the technology behind the device is much like the usual electronic keycard, except it enables the card to stay in the user’s pocket. Instead, the door-attached reader sucks data from the card across said person’s skin and out through their fingertips.

Although it all goes on sale for 800,000 yen in June, at this stage, the Firmo is really just a proof of concept that NTT hopes to develop into a full-fledged gore-centric data network that can connect anything from MP3 players to PCs. (J Mark Lytle/Metropolis)

External Link:http://tinyurl.com/64d2bc

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5 Comments

tkoind2 at 12:15 PM JST - 22nd May

Great. Yet another means for business to track our every move. Next they will add this to our train passes or ID cards. Will they add this to trains to see our travel patterns? To shop doors to see where we shop.

I love technology. But all the chips and tracking is something we need to be cautious about if we are to retain any privacy. At the company it is ok for access. Already they know. But the potential commercial and social applications of this are scary.
zzonkerr at 04:04 PM JST - 22nd May

You know, they way things are going, there should be a huge black market for false fingerprints coming sometime soon.
kdfz808 at 08:58 PM JST - 22nd May

Yes, and were business is, government is right behind.
kdfz808 at 08:58 PM JST - 22nd May

where
blvtzpk at 08:13 PM JST - 26th May

"Resistance is futile"