Earlier this year I went to an event in Austin, Texas, billed as a sneak preview of the evolution of our species. The #Bdyhax Conference, which took place in a downtown exhibition complex, promised a front-row insight into the coming “singularity” – that nirvana foretold by science fiction in which biology and technology would fuse and revolutionise human capability and experience.
The headline acts of the conference were mostly bodyhackers – DIY experimenters who, in their basements and garages, seek to enhance their own flesh and blood with biometric implants and cognitive enablers. These brave pioneers were extending their senses, overcoming physical limitation, Dan-Daring themselves and the rest of us into the future.
This will only get more advanced as the years go by. For now, actual technological augmentations and implants are mostly reserved for people who actually need them – things like prosthetic legs or a pacemaker – but eventually, we’ll start to develop augmentations to enhance the senses or abilities of the human body for people who are otherwise healthy.
Your body, your rules, but scary nonetheless.
Let’s get ready for intelligent design – or at least guided progression. Natural selection will still occur, but the speed at which we’ll design our future biological generations (or program them, or both), will easily out pace natural evolution.
If it means no more problems like EDS and Celiac and Donald Trump I’m all for it!
I remember watching Gatica, and thinking – boy life must be great for basically everyone else in that world! And the main character’s life didn’t turn out so bad either.
Evolution is a (mostly) slow process, where subtle and careful selection occurs.
the danger of this fast “evolution” is unthoughtful implementation. Something humans seem to be very good in.
So guess there is a way to program your pacemaker, update the software and even be able to add new features. how do we test it before we add it to this needed human? On pigs or something? And we are talking about life. Software failure is deadly in this case. You don’t want to reboot…
Also I think that diseases like cancer might be much better treated with very small robots. Or what about programmable bacteria? You can imagine the possibilities and dangers…
Well, then your assurance company is contacting your teeth and knows that you forgot to visit your dentist and sends you a signal…
There are other ways to look at it of course. I once read that industries grow and mature at a particular rate – roughly 50-80 years. When any new tech spurs the creation of a new industry, that industry makes a lot of mistakes for a few decades. Once the industry matures, things develop more slowly and take forever (cars, the airline industry, etc.)
That was talking about capitalism of course. There are concerns that some things have to be taken slowly from the get go (we are seeing worries over this with machine intelligence now), but we’d need a new socioeconomic system to achieve that, and I see too few people talking seriously about that (though they’re numbers are increasing).
If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the decades of intelligently designing computerized systems is that they will evolve by a process of natural selection whether we like it or not, in ways we may or may not like.
Wasn’t there a compass belt that would train you into sensing magnetic north by applying 360 degree moving pressure of where north is and thereby subconsciously turning on your senses? Or was that phake news?
Change is coming – that is the only inevitable. I prefer to be optimistic about it and think we will see some interesting possiblities. (Hopefully in my time.)
Look around the web and see that what most “body hackers” do is implant magnets. Ridiculous and potentially dangerous to themselves and others (MRI + material with any ferro-magnetic properties doesn’t mix). How is that more than a trivial body modification?
The “cyborg” from UK (will not mention his name) implanted a chip in his arm. It did’t do anything of course other than give him a PR boost. Real scientists doing real research have done actual machine-human interfaces long ago. For example look at the brain implant that have actually allowed a blind person to see – in the 80’s. Animal research in brain-machine interfacing is from at least the 70’s.
But why not go for things that actually exist and are used widely today?
Pacemakers
Cochlear implants
Insulin pumps
Brain implants to manage pain/uncontrollable shaking/seizures
Or even more common:
eyeglasses
What the amateurs do isn’t anything new or interesting. People have been into body modification for a long time. But we have actual living cyborgs among us and nobody notices.
But dude, none of these things are as “edgy” as some random dude without the required skills and tools implanting stuff in some dirty basement.
At least, that’s what movies have told me.
“Your body, your rules”? You mean like most computers? Many of those are being spied on and can be controlled by the corporation which we bought it from. Like the bait and switch upgrade Microsoft pulled recently. Off course Microsoft probably also has the power to just force an upgrade without sneaky tactic. Or they could just install ransomware on your computer, or delete your files in the next upgrade. You want a corporation to have that kind of control over your body?
Off course they are going to use this to get more control over us. It will be marketed as the hip new thing by celebrities, and meanwhile all the naive fools will get a backdoor in their body through which Uncle Sam will be able to spy on their every move and perhaps even control them.
“But maybe this can be used to catch terrorists” naive people may state. But the biggest terrorists are in the White House and will be the people using those backdoors to spy on us and control us.
Now I think about it. Why not put some brain bot inside cows, so they constantly think they are having a calve and produce milk, without being pregnant?
Or implement a gene inside sheep so they can actually digest the bone meal we are giving them to grow fast.
Or bots inside your stomach and colon which check your digestive system for cancer cells. Off course this will not solve the solution of bad food. But hey, we can sell these bots.
I like these exo-skeletons which make people with inabilities be able to move. To finish with something positive.
Colour blind artist with implant attached directly to his skull so he can sense colours, bitcoin chip implanted in your thumb,brain implants for athletes to ‘soon’ become a de facto standard to ‘fight’ against drug cheats during tournaments ..
This was from 2010 – 2012. We’re pretty much 5 – 6 years past this ..
I’m pretty sure this won’t go well, as much as putting this technology to “good use” goes. Almost every mass destruction weapon created by human hands had a “good use” when it was conceived.. How it ended up being used is an entirely different story.
i can already imagine some guy modding himself to be a more efficent fighter/killer.
makes me curious if that will be treated similarily to gun laws in the us.
Beware the bearers of false gifts and their broken promises..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetsuo:_The_Iron_Man