3 percent

Growth rate of U.S. IT employment in recent years.

Source: Association for Computing Machinery, February 2006

You're not a real techie until you've had an RFID tag implanted in your arm. OK, that day isn't here yet, but it might be coming faster than you think. The Associated Press reported last month that two workers at a Cincinnati video surveillance company that serves businesses and governments had rice-size silicon chips surgically embedded just beneath the skin on their forearms. They volunteered for the procedure to test the effectiveness of radio frequency identification tags for verifying the identity of workers who have access to vaults where data and images are kept for police departments.

You have to wonder, though, what would happen if the wrong RFID tag were implanted. With The Procter & Gamble Co. also in Cincinnati, one of those workers might now be identified as a case of diapers.