These new tattoos sync with your smart phone, will make you feel like you’re in a “Black Mirror” episode

If you were already worried about technology taking over your life, settle in, because it’s going to get…more intense. Take these tattoos that sync with your phone, for example. Soon, you could be sending signals and getting notifications from your phone on your skin. 

A short video posted to New Scientist’s Facebook page shows “electronic tattoos” light up and send signals to a screen when touched. The temporary tats (which are still being developed) go on instantly with water and come off after a few days like any other temporary tattoo, but are hooked up to a micro-controller to sync up with a phone or computer.

Martin Weigel of Saarland University in Germany has led the research for the slightly creepy technology and explained to New Scientist that it could allow you to squeeze a freckle to answer a phone call, or slide a finger over your knuckles to change the volume of your music. While this would really only save about two seconds, the technology involved still sounds pretty cool.

The tats aren’t available yet and probably won’t be for a while — but the technology will be presented at a computer-human interaction conference in Denver in May. So, you could be controlling your phone through a temporary butterfly tattoo in a few short years.

If you’ve watched a lot of Black Mirror lately, you’re probably skeptical of wearable technology like this, and rightfully so. What’s wrong with clicking a button to answer your phone like we’ve been doing for decades? However, there is the potential to make these electronic tats into cute, personalized accessories, just like phone cases, so there is one up side to futuristic technology changing the way we do things.