Mal Fletcher considers the potential pitfalls associated with making devices an extension - or an integral part - of the human frame.

This is perhaps an isolated incident and Big Data provides too many benefits for us to attempt to turn back the clock. However, the hacking of biochips would render personal privacy even less intrusion-proof.

Implants may appear convenient, but we must consider whether or not we want our bodies to become hackable devices.

Internally 'worn' chips also raise other ethical considerations.

One of the most pertinent relates to the line between humanity and technology. As we use nanorobotics and bio-mechanical chips to inject a new breed of prosthetic devices into the human frame, will we lose our sense of differentiation between what is human and what is machine? At what point then might we truly become androids?

Far from being frivolous questions for sci-fi aficionados, these are now subjects undergoing serious debate in major universities - particularly in fast-growing ethics faculties. (What was sci-fi yesterday becomes wi-fi tomorrow.)

Commercially-oriented chip implants also raise questions relating to digital debt. The growing number of charities and social enterprises devoted to helping the indebted bear witness to what is already a rapidly spreading problem in modern societies.

The uncoupling of spending from physical cash has doubtless played a key role boosting personal debt. Paper money and coinage have substance and weight; it is relatively easy to keep track of how much we spend when our money has a physical presence. We know it's time to wind back on impulse purchases when the wad of cash in our pockets starts to feel a little on the light side.

Credit cards do not change weight when money leaves our accounts. At least, though, the process of filling out a credit card slip - now less and less a part of purchasing, thanks to wave and pay - provides some kind of physical reminder, albeit a tenuous one, that purchases cost us something of real-world value.

The advent of digital currencies such as bitcoin creates a potential for even greater overspending. The ones and zeroes of binary code have no weight at all. Implanted chips will continue to erode the link in human consciousness between spending and real-world value.

Arguably, companies like Visa have little interest in this problem. There are real benefits for them in divorcing the act of a consumer's spending from any process of forethought.

Subcutaneous spending devices also raise the potential for digital dementia. In 2011, an international study concluded, after ten years of investigation, that the onset of dementia begins at around the age of 45, rather than 65 as was previously believed.

At the 2020Plus think tank, we posed an important question linked to this study. If a similar ten-year scientific investigation commenced today, would we find at its conclusion that things we associate with dementia in 2015 had now become normal cognitive function?

Would loss of short-term memory, numeracy skills and feelings of confusion have ceased to be peculiar because we had ceded so many areas of our thinking to machines?

We already rely on gadgets for arithmetic, spelling, navigation and, increasingly, person-to-person interaction. What happens to the parts of our brains responsible for these and other activities if they are no longer called upon on a regular basis?