But the real question, as he sees it, is who will be able to demand that a chip be implanted in another person -- a parent in a child; a prison in an inmate; the INS in an undocumented illegal alien found in the country; an employer in an employee as a condition of being hired?

"I'm sure there's a strong argument that implanting a chip in a person is unconstitutional. It would be cruel and unusual punishment," he says. And for now the legal and social questions of who could turn such a chip on or off and who would have access to the information generated by such a chip is "a totally unexplored area," says Gellman, adding: "And probably one better off left unexplored."

Others see the chipification of humans as all but inevitable. Chris Hables Gray, professor, self-proclaimed "cyborgologist" and author of the forthcoming book "Cyborg Citizen," says that it really doesn't matter whether or not the "Digital Angel" flies in October. "If this company doesn't do it, someone else will," he says. And watch out when they do.

"They will start implanting them in prisoners, parolees, child abusers, sex offenders and drunk drivers," he predicts. Gray says that it's been a military project for some 20 years to find a way to track every soldier on the battlefield. Remember when Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh complained having been a part of a Gulf War experiment that implanted a chip in his butt? "McVeigh kept saying that he was being controlled by a chip in his ass," says Gray. The cyborgologist isn't saying he believes the bomber, of course, but cites circumstantial evidence that the military may have been experimenting with such tracking devices, and "if the military starts to say we will put these chips into every Marine's ass, they have no protection from that."

No matter how creepy we find the prospect of such a technology, we can't stop its creation -- nor would we necessarily want to. "Technology is continually trumping the constitutional guarantees that we have," says Gray. He'd like to see protections against the misuse of such chips as they become commercially available: "Citizens could ask for a law that made it a crime to put these into a person without their permission, and to forbid, under any conditions, for the government to put these into prisoners, parolees, illegal aliens, soldiers, citizens." He's even proposed -- "only half joking" -- a "Cyborg Bill of Rights" to help ensure that "new technologies are chosen democratically and we do not have to accept every new technology that invades our freedoms."

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Meet Gus, the cyberkitty

All paranoia and conspiracy theories aside, it's alarming how quickly a new technological "option" becomes a requirement. The microchipping of pets is a case in point.

Take Gus, a 14-year old Balinese blue-point cat with a bad habit of running away from home. "He's a conniving little runt," says his owner, David Huffman, affectionately. "He's a little man in a cat suit that escapes anytime he has the chance."

The wily kitty refuses to be saddled by a collar with an identification tag. "He just pulls it off. I don't know how he does it. He's a nudist," huffs Huffman. After the naked cat's fifth recent breakout, when Huffman went to pick up the critter at San Francisco Animal Care and Control, a staffer gently recommended that he have his wanderlusty pet technologically enhanced, for the animal's own good, of course.

Gus now sports a tiny microchip, which was implanted in his shoulder with a syringe and identifies him -- permanently. "Cat modification!" exclaims Huffman, with geeky glee -- he's a dot-com CEO.

The way this cat-chipping works is really quite simple. Gus has an id number (No. 401 278 486B) embedded under his skin on a microchip about the size of a grain of rice. Huffman's address and contact information are kept in a database, maintained by the American Kennel Club so if the footloose cat is picked up by a vet or shelter anywhere around the country he could theoretically be scanned, matched with his owner in the database and reunited. The scanner sends a radio wave to the microchip and activates it to respond with the info.

More than 670,000 animals -- including no less than 134,007 cats, 54 pot-bellied pigs and five emu -- have been enrolled in the American Kennel Club program so far, and almost 35,000 lost pets have been recovered, according to the organization. Huffman shelled out $70 for the "installation," which took just a few minutes, and paid a $12.50 enrollment fee to keep his info in the contact database. "Gus has no choice. It's a violation of his animal civil liberties. He calls the ACLU all the time," he kids. "This is like kitty Lojack," boasts Huffman of his "cyberkitty's" techno body modification.

All the strays adopted from the San Francisco animal shelter now have such identification chips implanted under their skin. According to the American Kennel Club, a number of localities -- Columbia, S.C.; Indianapolis, Ind.; Albuquerque, N.M.; and Dade County, Fla.; among them -- have adopted ordinances requiring such chip implants. What has been a novelty is now required.

Nevermind some animal organizations' skepticism about the effectiveness of using a microchip to bring home a lost pet, and the grousing of grumpy cultural commentators -- like National Public Radio's Andrei Codrescu, author of a collection of essays entitled "The Dog with a Chip in his Neck" -- who mock the chip-enhanced furry friend as yet another symptom of the idiocy of modern life.

Better still, Applied Digital Solutions, the company behind the "Digital Angel," is in the process of acquiring Destron Fearing, one of the main creators of the chips for animals, to create a kind of monster surveillance technology company.

Huffman is unmoved by the creepy overtones of "improving" a cat with a chip: "He's a cyborg. But we all are," he muses. "I use a cellphone, and drive a car. That makes me a cyborg. He's just a more fully integrated cyborg." In fact, Huffman, who heads a Bay Area start-up called Linkify says that he wouldn't mind being a bit more fully integrated himself. How would he feel about having a chip implanted in him? "If I ever had amnesia, then they could tell me who I was. That might not be a bad idea," he says.

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