The 2010s and 2020s have seen the emergence of entirely new categories of body modification, including UV-reactive and thermochromic tattoos that change with body temperature or light, microchip implants for digital identity and payment, subdermal magnets, and genetic body modification. Artists and technologists have experimented with tattoo inks incorporating biological data, QR codes, and NFC chips that turn the tattooed body into a machine-readable text. These developments have extended the ancient practice of body inscription into a post-human register, raising unprecedented questions about identity, data, and the boundaries of the self.

The technologisation of body modification has generated an emerging body of speculative and science fiction poetry exploring the post-human body as a site of digital inscription. Poets including Juliana Spahr, Harryette Mullen, and practitioners of the Flarf and conceptual poetry movements have engaged with the idea of the body as a data-bearing surface in which biological and digital inscription converge. The QR-code tattoo, the microchipped body, and the data-encoded skin have entered poetic discourse as figures for the final colonisation of the body by information capitalism — a dystopian extension of the ancient practice of writing on flesh.