Tattoos have come a long way. It used to be that only sailors or ‘unsavory characters’ chose to adorn their bodies with drawings of skeletons or their mothers. Nowadays, however, tattoos have truly and officially gone mainstream. Your boss probably has one or two. Heck, your mom probably has one or two. Where can they go from here, though? Well, they can get useful, aside from showing off your unique sense of style. Here is a tech-heavy tat that promises to do something for your bod as it sits on your bod(and looks quite good doing it.)
The first thing you might notice about this tattoo is that it’s gold. That’s pretty swank. It’s also designed to notice minute temperature shifts in your body. Hey, that’s also pretty swank but in a totally different way. Designed by University of Illinois researcher John Rogers, this tattoo is actually also an electronic thermometer. It attaches to the skin with a water-soluble adhesive, where it then monitors your body temperature to two one-thousandths of a degree. That’s pretty exact. We imagine a dystopian future where nobody can say “I think I have a fever” in order to get out of doing stuff.
The idea of having your body temperature constantly monitored may not mean anything to most people, but it is something that will assuredly help people with certain medical conditions. Also cool? This tat only costs pennies to make, making it even cheaper than that cool drawing you got on your butt of Beavis and Butthead smoking cigarettes. What were you thinking with that one? Geeze. There is no word when this tech will become commercially available.
