The Chip(or TC, as people Clara's age usually call it) is software in our computers that mitigates the issue of constant communication. People are connected to their devices through a chip and can friend people how one would have ten years ago on social media or Find My Friends. It lets them communicate with people in their lives while also setting the boundary of no conversational communication. The Chip also allows individuals to be a statistic, so everyone knows how crowded a gathering is or the length of a queue. When it was first proposed, The Chip incited anxiety about government control, but the issues of mental and physical health were so bad that it won the popular vote in Clara’s country anyways. Prior, many people lived at home and barely left because everything was so accessible: work, food delivery, and communication. TC provided a positive boundary that required people to gather to interact and function from day to day.