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| Hand with planned insertion point for Verichip device (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
By Carl Weiss
Is your
body letting you down? How much time out of your daily schedule do you relinquish
for exercise? Are you tired of moving heaven
and earth to support that bag of chemicals and water we call our bodies? Do
you wish you could enhance your senses or even add new capabilities to your
existing body? While this used to be the realm of science fiction only a
few years ago, current and rapidly emerging technologies allow you to repair,
replace or enhance that old bag of bones here and now. In this week's
Working the Web to Win blog, I will take you into the lab to explore bio-tech
that is being used to repair, replace or enhance human beings. I will
also introduce you to a new cult of devotees who are ready, willing and able to
undergo painful medical procedures to take the cyborg plunge and bio-hack their
way to a better life.
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| Courtesy of |
Now
I know what you’re thinking. Only a few people are actually augmenting their bodies
with these cybernetic implants and the like. Well, I disagree. The reality is humans
have been augmenting our bodies for thousands of years. The way I see it - human
augmentation falls into three categories. The first level wearables or attachable
items. A partial list of items would include; clothing, shoes, hearing aids, eyeglasses, false teeth, binoculars, bicycles, watches, activity trackers, and environmental
suits (scuba, space, exosuits etc.). The second level of augmentation includes items like
implanted teeth, eye lens, joint implants, and regular prosthetics etc. … The last
level includes such items as limb replacements with smart prosthetics, smart mechanical
organs, biologically enhanced organs and more sophisticated, smart versions of level one and two augmentations
like strength and speed enhancing exosuits.
The
Pioneering of Body Modification
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| Courtesy of Steve Haworth YouTube.com |
The name Steve Haworth isn’t exactly a household word. At least not yet. Unlike the other two Steve’s of Apple Computer
fame, Steve Haworth has not yet achieved the level of rock star geek status that
Jobs and Woz did. But he could well be on
his way. That’s because he is one of the
pioneers of body modification who routinely performs surgery on people looking to
add enhancements to their body. Since he
is not a board certified surgeon, this means that these procedures are done without
the aid of anesthetic, unless you count ice.
Although Haworth’s family has long been associated with medical device engineering,
Steve cut his teeth in the 90’s by dabbling with body piercing, 3D tattoos and something
called the Metal Mohawk. (You can’t make
this stuff up folks.) Fast forward fifteen
years and Steve’s modifications are now more sci-fi than technopunk. One of the enhancements that Steve routinely performs
is the surgical implantation of rare earth magnets. Now I know what you’re thinking, “Why would anybody
pay to get turned into a refrigerator magnet?”
Well, it’s a little more complicated than that. While Steve and other bio-hacking enthusiasts
have posted videos which show them moving metal objects with the
magnetic field generated by their enhanced digits, apparently there is another
side effect of the procedure. Apparently
this enhancement also provides the recipient with a virtual Spidey sense that allows
them to perceive magnetic fields. For
$350 you too can experience the pulse of electric motors, junction boxes, high tension
wires and any device that imparts a magnetic field.
Cyborg DIY, Really?
Of course, there are more ways to enhance your senses than by simply implanting
magnets. Adventurous people have implanted
everything from RFID chips that allows them to control nearby devices, turn on and
off the lights, not to mention open their garage door without the use of a clicker. There is another popular procedure called Southpaw
that involves the implantation of a compass that in essence turns you into a homing
pigeon by letting you sense kinesthetically when you are facing north. (I should probably get one of these for my mother,
since she is terrible when it comes to following directions.)
You can also have computer chips implanted that sense your biometric data,
turning you into the human equivalent of a FitBit. Others have had led lights implanted beneath their
skin, turning them into a cross between a tattoo and a casino marquis. While most of the devices are tiny, I have seen
at least one adventurous lad named Ted Cannon, who had a device the size of a smartphone
implanted beneath the skin of his forearm.
You can view
his video interview on his blog which also show the implanted device in his
arm (Just make sure you haven’t eaten
recently.)
More telling is that Ted’s company, Grindhouse Wetware, builds devices that
are designed to integrate with the human body.
Geordi LaForge of Star
Trek Fame Would be Proud,
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| Courtesy of https://www.flickr.com |
Not so Happy - Happy Meal
With DIY?
On the other side of the coin, there are people who are so unconcerned with
appearances that they will risk ridicule, or even worse, to possess enhanced abilities. One of these acolytes is Steve Mann, who has become
something of a biohacking legend since he was forcibly ejected from a McDonald’s
restaurant in Paris France when he walked into the establishment sporting what amounts
to a DIY version of Google Glass. The chief
difference was that Steve Mann’s glasses were bolted to his head. Referred to as the “Father of Wearable Computing,”
he has been making a techno fashion statement for years.
While much of the biohacking scene has been taking place in basements and
back alleys, that doesn’t mean that the phenomenon hasn’t garnered academic attention. One notable is Captain Cyborg, otherwise known
as Kevin Warwick, professor of cybernetics at Coventry University. Ina 2013 interview in Forbes Magazine that took place in Warwick’s office, which
writer Emma Byrne described as “a cross between a toyshop and Tony Stark’s basement,”
the professor was asked which project he was most proud.
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| Courtesy of |
“Sam Morse, the inventor of Morse code, talked about brain-to-brain communication. He sorted out the distance, but he still needed
that physical interface, the finger on the key.
Over the years we’ve made loads of improvements in bandwidth and distance,
but we still haven’t got past the interface problem.”
Like Steve Haworth’s rare earth magnets, the brain-to-brain interface
Dr. Warwick shared with his wife was more akin to a sixth sense than mere
communication. (How many men reading
this would love to never be asked again what they are thinking by their
wives?) More significantly, it’s this extrasensory
perception that has Warwick and other researchers interested in exploring the possibilities
yet further. When asked about the possibilities
as well as the perils in experimenting with the human body, Warwick replied,
“When Alexander Graham Bell made the first phone call, at first people couldn’t
see the point in what he was doing. What’s
the point of the first phone? But it didn’t
stop there. I think what I’m doing is like
that. Maybe when I’ve been dead ten years
people will go, ‘Oh! That’s what that was for.’
What you do in terms of prizes and degrees and all that – that’s absolutely
nothing. It’s when you do something no one’s
done before. When you push it, that’s what’s
exciting.”
While that may hold true, advances in augmentation from science and medicine
like joint replacement and heart transplantation moved us forward, these new augmentations
may very well become commonplace in the near future. Having seen and become aware
of this trend, I can’t help thinking that somewhere the ghost of Mary Shelley is
spinning in her grave saying - “It’s Alive!”
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If you’d
like to read similar articles about cybernetics, check out: “A Borg in Every Boardroom - Cyber Augmentation for All"
and "Birth of the Bionic Man" or just type your Keywords into
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Carl Weiss is president
of Working the Web to Win, an
award-winning digital marketing agency based in Jacksonville,
Florida. You can listen to
Carl live every Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern on BlogTalkRadio.
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Absolutely fantastic and intriguing! Put me down for a pair of the 20/20 eye lenses with magnification please, and then I can upgrade to the auto-recording of everything I see - like a permanent Go-Pro for life! The possibilities truly are endless.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, what once was science fiction is now a reality. Amazing.... great article!
ReplyDelete