video by H1
Written & Directed by: Stephan Zlotescu Director of Photography: H1 Original Music: J-Punch Producer: Christopher Sewall Manager: Scott Glassgold / IAM Entertainment An N1ON Production http://N1ON.COM
- By Max Tatton-Brown
- 06 September 2012
From Beowulf to Captain America, the idea of supersoldiers has captured the human imagination for time immemorial. But after years of mixed results (the less said about LSD tests, the better), how close are we today to creating the ultimate soldier? »
- By Liat Clark
- 06 September 2012
DIY biohacker Tim Cannon shares his 40 year plan for the ultimate transhumanist redesign of the human body »
- By Olivia Solon
- 06 September 2012
As part of Wired.co.uk's Transhuman Week, we take a look at what chemical enhancements there are on the horizon »
- By Tanya Lewis
- 06 September 2012
Walking on a treadmill is no great feat, unless your legs are being moved by a robotic device connected to your brain »
- By Ian Steadman
- 05 September 2012
The history of modern sport is the history of the attempts to create a "perfect" athlete, even down to the genetic level »
- By Guest Author
- 05 September 2012
Every year millions of pacemakers, cochlear and neural implants are successfully implanted in hospitals and clinics worldwide -- would you call that transhumanism? »
- By Liat Clark
- 04 September 2012
Grindhouse Wetware is taking on mainstream transhumanist theorists by enhancing their bodies now with garage-style body hacks that encourage a curious public to toy with an electromagnetic sixth sense »
- By Nate Lanxon
- 04 September 2012
The term "cyborg" literally means "cybernetic organism" -- a being constructed of both mechanical and organic material. As part of Wired.co.uk's Transhuman Week, we explore six examples of living cyborgs »
- By Guest Author
- 04 September 2012
Every runner is dependent on artificial conditions for his or her performance. Pistorius is an extreme example, but he's certainly not the only runner who relies on technology to succeed »
- By Guest Author
- 04 September 2012
Some transhumanists believe that as technology improves, people might replace their healthy retinas for implants if it meant gaining new capabilities such as night vision »
- By Olivia Solon
- 03 September 2012
Wired.co.uk seeks to navigate the thorny ethical, medical and social issues associated with using technology to enhance the human body and mind through a series of features, galleries and guest posts »
- By Ian Steadman
- 03 September 2012
We're moving towards a world where our ability to technologically augment the human body is eroding the idea of a disability as any kind of impairment, and the Wellcome Collection's Superhuman exhibition takes a look at what that means for the future of humanity »
- By Olivia Solon
- 03 September 2012
The Paralympics not only demonstrate human fitness and endurance, but also engineering prowess, with many athletes requiring bespoke equipment to help them perform. Wired.co.uk takes a look at some of the technologies used in the Games »
- By Liat Clark
- 03 September 2012
A woman suffering from retinitis pigmentosa has become the first person to have an Australian firm's electrode-fuelled "pre-bionic eye" fitted, a retinal implant that has allowed her to experience some vision »
- By Alex Fleetwood
- 22 August 2012
Watching the Olympics, it would be easy to feel that there's only way to dive, box or play tennis. It plays into an idea that the rules of the game are static, unchanging, immutable. That just ain't so »
- By Mark Brown
- 22 November 2011
A team of micro-engineers has made the first stride towards projecting augmented-reality vision in front of the human eye »
- By Miran Pavic
- 10 May 2010
New bionic arm i-Limb Pulse allows users to handle heavy objects or delicate items, as well as customise the grips to fit their needs »
Steroids. Ritalin. Modafinil. Prozac. EPO. These are just a selection of drugs that could be described as boosting the cognitive or physical performance of human beings. As part of Wired.co.uk's Transhuman Week, we take a look at what chemical enhancements there are on the horizon.
Memory enhancement
Baylor University researchers have discovered a molecule called PKR, which regulates how neurons interact in memory-related tasks. When the molecule is genetically suppressed, another immune molecule called gamma interferon steps in. The understudy molecule is much better at increasing communication between neurons and making memory more efficient. By finding a chemical inhibitor for the PKR molecule the team realised it could generate the memory boost without using genetic engineering. They found a molecule that did the trick, and it could be used to develop drugs to help Alzheimer's patients combat memory loss. Likewise it could be used by people who don't have Alzheimers to turbo-charge their memories.Live strong and long
A gene called DAF-2 has been suppressed in nematode worms through genetic manipulation to allow them to live six times longer than normal. Cynthia Kenyon, who researches ageing, and her team believe the gene may also play a key role in human ageing and may be susceptible to pharmacological manipulation -- Kenyon predicts within 15 years -- although that should be taken with a large pinch of salt.In the interim, we'll just have to make do with the human growth hormone -- already popular in older male Hollywood circles, HGH plays a key role in development and healing. Patients with low levels of the growth hormone might put find it hard maintaining their body weight, so can take a synthetic version of the hormone called somatropin. The drug has been shown to increase muscle strength and aerobic endurance, especially when combined with testosterone. However, joint pain and carpal tunnel syndrome came as side effects.
Combatting baldness
Male pattern baldness affects 80 percent of men at some point in their lives and no matter how convincing the claims of various cosmetic products are, there's very little that can hold back the hair loss. However, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have identified an enzyme called prostaglandin D2 that inhibits hair growth. Drugs that block the protein are already available on the market, being used to treat asthma and allergies, however they could be repurposed into lotions to transform wispy thinning hair into stronger, longer locks. However, it's unclear whether it can help grow hair where "as a coot" baldness has been achieved.Moral enhancement
Drugs that affect our perceived "moral" behaviour already exist. Anti-depressants lower aggression and can make people friendlier, and oxytocin can increase feelings of empathy (although it is a huge stretch to refer to it as the molecule that underpins human morality as neuroeconomist Paul Zak claims).Some factions of the transhumanist community are investigating the possibility of using drugs for "moral enhancement", or using a cocktail of drugs to change people's emotional responses in the hope that it will somehow "improve" their moral behaviour. Clearly, we'll need a lot more progress in understanding the incredible complexity of brain chemistry before this would be even a remote possibility. Many of the drugs in question have different effects depending on the circumstances. For example, oxytocin makes you more likely to trust members of your social group, but reduces empathy for those outside of the group.
Furthermore, it appears to presuppose an understanding of what the "right" and "wrong" emotional and behavioural response is. Despite these major challenges, it is a rich area of research, with neuroethicists exploring the possibilities of using such drugs within the criminal justice system. Could this be the late 21st century lobotomy?
Don't miss: more transhumanism features
Now scientists studying the intricacies of DNA and other molecular bio-dynamics may be poised to offer even more dramatic boosts to longevity. This comes not from setting out explicitly to conquer aging, which remains controversial in mainstream science, but from researchers developing new drugs and therapies for such maladies of growing old as heart disease and diabetes.
You'd never know it from looking at her, but my sister Rachel has pressure settings.
They're regulated by a surgically implanted valve in her head, part of a system called a ventriculoperitoneal shunt that makes her one of a growing number of humans medically augmented with implantable and attachable devices.
The shunt drains excess cerebrospinal fluid that would otherwise over-accumulate inside her skull due to a congenital condition called hydrocephalus, or "water on the brain," that can damage brain tissue if left untreated. The apparatus directs the fluid from the magnetized pressure valve in her head down through a tube that leads to her abdomen, where it's re-absorbed by her body.
My sister, Rachel Katz, pictured post-op with one of her main healers, her Labradoodle Charlie.
(Credit: Rick Lewis)Yes, my sister has a magnet in her head, and to answer a few questions commonly asked since her latest surgery a few months ago, yes, she'll be able to go through airport security scanners and metal detectors and stand near microwaves. But she'll need to be cautious of some kinds of audio headphones, and after she gets magnetic resonance imaging scans, a doctor will have to hold a special handheld device to her head to recalibrate her pressure settings.
Think of hydrocephalus as a plumbing problem. She needs tubes and valves to do what most of our bodies do naturally.
But plumbing equipment, as most of us know, can break down at the most inopportune times. And, as I was recently and terrifyingly reminded, plumbing systems for humans do, too. So it was that my bright, beautiful little sister Rachel started to experience an odd array of symptoms nearly 20 years after her last brain surgery to replace a shunt that had become infected.
It started with numbness and tingling in her arms and hands, which at the time we all hoped might simply be attributed to the computer use that leaves so many modern-day desk jockeys with aching wrists and knotted necks.
But on a Monday morning in late April, she ended up in the emergency room with headaches so severe that no amount of morphine could relieve them. An MRI painted a frightening picture of the goings-on in her head. The swelling in her brain's ventricles could only be explained by a malfunctioning shunt, the doctors said, and by that night she was undergoing emergency brain surgery to replace it.
Emergency upgrade needed
In the scary and surreal hours leading up to the operation, doctors remarked that 19 years was an impressive run for my sister's machinery. I write about gizmos for a living, and I'd be highly impressed by any TV, computer, or floor-cleaning robot that hit almost two decades. But a mere 19 years for a life-saving device? While up to 50 percent of shunted patients need a revising operation within two years due to obstruction or malfunction, according to the Hydrocephalus Association, I couldn't help but wonder why technology hadn't served my sister better.
Using a handheld magnetized device, a doctor's assistant adjusts my sister's newly implanted shunt a few days after her surgery. (Click to enlarge.)
(Credit: Andy Lipnick)There was some good news, though. Rachel would be getting an upgrade to a Medtronic Strata valve, which can be adjusted non-surgically, unlike her old fixed-pressure shunt valve, which had to be calibrated before placement in her head and could only be adjusted later by way of a scalpel.
With her new type of valve, which was introduced in the U.S. in 2002, a doctor or technician simply places a strong magnet against the back side of her head and rotates a circular dial, like something you might see in the world of "Total Recall."
"It gives you a lot more flexibility," Michel Kliot, a professor of clinical neurosurgery at the University of California at San Francisco and my sister's surgeon, told me.
My sister says her new shunt doesn't feel any different than her previous systems, though she does periodically experience what she describes as a "spark sensation." More than thinking about the workings of the shunt itself lately, she finds herself pondering her complex relationship to technology.
"I am truly grateful and completely amazed by how technology has allowed me to live and thrive," she says, "but there is also the reality that technology can fail and cause great suffering, or, in the worst case, death. Devices have a certain shelf life, and that is just how it is."
Hydrocephalus can result from inherited genetic abnormalities or developmental disorders that block the flow of cerebrospinal fluid. Meningitis, tumors, or traumatic head injury can also cause the condition. Experts estimate that hydrocephalus affects approximately 1 in every 500 children. We suspect my sister was born with the condition, although it didn't officially manifest itself until age 12, when she suddenly began suffering from horrible headaches.
The Medtronics Strata valve measures 1.85 inches wide by 0.63 inches deep and 0.28 inches high and includes a magnet, which is adjusted externally using the set of handheld tools pictured below. (Click to enlarge.)
(Credit: Medtronics)No matter the cause, surgical implantation of a shunt to redirect accumulated cerebrospinal fluid is the common solution, and one that normally needs to be in place for the patient's entire life. Shunts have been around for 50-60 years, Kliot says, though the early systems involved tubing alone. Valves came later, and the kind of programmable valve that now lives behind my sister's right ear represents the latest, most modern wave.
My sister's Medtronic Strata valve -- which measures 1.85 inches wide by 0.63 inches deep and 0.28 inches high -- carries a suggested retail price of between $3,000 and $4,000, depending on the configuration.
Such programmable valves signify an advance, to be sure, but Kliot admits that progress in shunt systems is lagging. They are still easily clogged with debris such as blood and protein particles, for one thing, and can't be cleared without surgery.
Fortunately, "people recognize it's a problem and they're trying to make better shunt systems," Kliot says.
Engineering a smarter shunt
One of those people is Samuel Browd, a pediatric neurosurgeon at Seattle Children's Hospital and the University of Washington's Harborview Medical Center.He and colleague Barry Lutz, a micro-fluidics expert at the university, are working to develop an entirely redesigned and smarter shunt.
First and foremost, the pair is focusing on producing a failure-resistant device that's less likely than current models to become clogged and break down, resulting in a life-threatening emergency. If the tubes on this newer shunt become blocked, they can recognize the obstruction and expand to let it pass through before assuming their previous shape.
"Our immediate goal is to reduce shunt malfunctions by 50 percent," Browd explains. "If we can meet that milestone, we'll have vastly improved the way hydrocephalus is treated."
Browd and Lutz are also building in an electronic data transmission feature that could record and offload data from onboard pressure sensors, letting doctors check the working status of a shunt remotely. This means that before long, clinicians could be relieving patients' shunt-related headaches by remotely dialing fluid flow up or down, in much the same way that those with pacemakers can now have their devices adjusted over the phone.
"You could envision it communicating with a smartphone app," Browd posits. "If you don't feel good, it could interrogate the valve, make sure the valve's functioning properly, check what the [intracranial pressure] is, and tell you that or relay that to your physician. That's I think where the future of this is going."
Time to schedule a tune-up
Electronics, of course, need power, and the valve on the next-gen device will have a battery life of eight years. That means families will be able to plan for battery-replacement procedures before the device fails unpredictably, as is so often the case currently. Getting a battery replaced would be a simple 30-minute maintenance procedure, Browd says. Think of it like scheduling a 70,000-mile tune-up.Browd and Lutz have formed a company, Aqueduct Neurosciences, and hope to bring their shunt to market within five years with help from the UW's Center for Commercialization, which helps researchers take innovations beyond the lab. They are getting additional funding from the National Institutes of Health and Coulter Foundation, among others.
Samuel Browd (left) and Barry Lutz work on a new shunt in the University of Washington's bioengineering lab. The best shunt designs still fail with high frequency, and they are trying to change that.
(Credit: University of Washington)Though I fervently hope these advances never need to be applied to my sister, for my family, and others like us, they can only be reassuring.
"My last shunt lasted 19 years, so I am hopeful with the technological advancements that have taken place since then that I won't have any problems in the future," my sister says. "There are, of course, no guarantees. I've accepted this."
Fear, hope, and appreciation
Nonetheless, she has faced emotional challenges post-op -- dealing with the residual shock and fear of becoming ill so quickly and having to undergo major surgery; worrying about what the future holds for her health; and on a lesser scale, adjusting to her shaved head (early nicknames included "Sinead O'Katz," and her favorites, "Diva Monk" and "Monk Rocker").Devices have a certain shelf life, and that is just how it is.
--Rachel KatzStill, she's doing remarkably well. The excruciating headaches have dissipated and she's gone from needing daily medication for managing post-op pain to giving up pain pills almost entirely. In the weeks after the surgery, she'd push herself to walk just a few steps farther down the block each day. Now, she's back to her insanely intense workouts. She's returned to work as a counselor and hospice volunteer, and she even shares her soprano singing talents with patients at the hospital where she was so ill just a few months back.
All that she has endured, she says, while "at times, scary and overwhelming, has also provided me with the greater gifts of compassion, tenderness, vulnerability, appreciation, and acceptance. In an odd sort of way, technology has made me more human."
POLITICAL revolutionaries turn the world upside down. Scientific ones more often turn it inside out. And that, almost literally, is happening to the idea of what, biologically speaking, a human being is.
The traditional view is that a human body is a collection of 10 trillion cells which are themselves the products of 23,000 genes. If the revolutionaries are correct, these numbers radically underestimate the truth. For in the nooks and crannies of every human being, and especially in his or her guts, dwells the microbiome: 100 trillion bacteria of several hundred species bearing 3m non-human genes. The biological Robespierres believe these should count, too; that humans are not single organisms, but superorganisms made up of lots of smaller organisms working together.
It might sound perverse to claim bacterial cells and genes as part of the body, but the revolutionary case is a good one. For the bugs are neither parasites nor passengers. They are, rather, fully paid-up members of a community of which the human “host” is but a single (if dominating) member. This view is increasingly popular: the world’s leading scientific journals, Nature and Science, have both reviewed it extensively in recent months. It is also important: it will help the science and practice of medicine (see article).
All in this together
The microbiome does many jobs in exchange for the raw materials and shelter its host provides. One is to feed people more than 10% of their daily calories. These are derived from plant carbohydrates that human enzymes are unable to break down. And not just plant carbohydrates. Mother’s milk contains carbohydrates called glycans which human enzymes cannot digest, but bacterial ones can.
This alone shows how closely host and microbiome have co-evolved over the years. But digestion is not the only nutritional service provided. The microbiome also makes vitamins, notably B2, B12 and folic acid. It is, moreover, capable of adjusting its output to its host’s needs and diet. The microbiomes of babies make more folic acid than do those of adults. And microbiomes in vitamin-hungry places like Malawi and rural Venezuela turn out more of these chemicals than do those in the guts of North Americans.
The microbiome also maintains the host’s health by keeping hostile interlopers at bay. An alien bug that causes diarrhoea, for instance, is as much an enemy of the microbiome as of the host. Both have an interest in zapping it. And both contribute to the task. Host and microbiome, then, are allies. But there is more to it than that. For the latest research shows their physiologies are linked in ways which make the idea of a human superorganism more than just a rhetorical flourish.
These links are most visible when they go wrong. A disrupted microbiome has been associated with a lengthening list of problems: obesity and its opposite, malnutrition; diabetes (both type-1 and type-2); atherosclerosis and heart disease; multiple sclerosis; asthma and eczema; liver disease; numerous diseases of the intestines, including bowel cancer; and autism. The details are often obscure, but in some cases it looks as if bugs are making molecules that help regulate the activities of human cells. If these signals go wrong, disease is the consequence. This matters because it suggests doctors have been looking in the wrong place for explanations of these diseases. It also suggests a whole new avenue for treatment. If an upset microbiome causes illness, settling it down might effect a cure.
Yogurt companies and health-food fanatics have been banging this drum for years. And in the case of at least one malady, irritable-bowel syndrome, they are right. So-called probiotics, a mixture of about half a dozen bacterial species found in yogurt, do act to calm this condition. But there is little evidence that consuming probiotics has the tonic effect on healthy people that certain adverts suggest.
A handful of doctors are taking a more fundamental approach to another microbiome-related disease, infection with Clostridium difficile. This bacterium, which causes life-threatening distension of the gut in some people who have been treated with antibiotics and thus had their microbiomes disrupted, is a bane of hospitals. It kills 14,000 people a year in America alone. But recent experiments have shown it can be eliminated by introducing, as an enema, the faeces of a healthy individual. “Stool transplants” are a pretty crude approach, to be sure, but the crucial point is that microbes are much easier to manipulate than human cells. For all the talk of superorganisms (and despite the yuck factor of what is being moved from one body to another), transplanting a microbiome is far easier than transplanting a heart or a kidney.
Disgusting but useful
Two other areas look promising. One is more sophisticated deployment of the humble antibiotic, arguably the pharma industry’s most effective invention. At the moment antibiotics are used mainly to kill infections. In the future they might have a more subtle use—to manipulate the mix of bugs within a human, so that good bugs spread at the expense of bad ones.
The other field that may be changed is genetics. Many of the diseases in which the microbiome is implicated seem to run in families. In some, such as heart disease, that is partly explained by known human genes. In a lot, though, most notably autism, the genetic link is obscure. This may be because geneticists have been looking at the wrong set of genes—the 23,000 rather than the 3m. For those 3m are still inherited. They are largely picked up from your mother during the messy process of birth. Though no clear example is yet known, it is possible that particular disease-inducing strains are being passed down the generations in this way.
As with all such upheavals, it is unclear where the microbiome revolution will end up. Doctors and biologists may truly come to think of people as superorganisms. Then again, they may not. What is clear, though, is that turning thinking inside out in this way is yielding new insights into seemingly intractable medical problems, and there is a good chance cures will follow. Vive la révolution!
He said that science is increasingly discovering that genes have a significant influence on personality – with certain genetic markers in embryo suggesting future characteristics.
By screening in and screening out certain genes in the embryos, it should be possible to influence how a child turns out.
In the end, he said that "rational design" would help lead to a better, more intelligent and less violent society in the future.
"Surely trying to ensure that your children have the best, or a good enough, opportunity for a great life is responsible parenting?" wrote Prof Savulescu, the Uehiro Professor in practical ethics.
"So where genetic selection aims to bring out a trait that clearly benefits an individual and society, we should allow parents the choice.
"To do otherwise is to consign those who come after us to the ball and chain of our squeamishness and irrationality.
"Indeed, when it comes to screening out personality flaws, such as potential alcoholism, psychopathy and disposition to violence, you could argue that people have a moral obligation to select ethically better children.
"They are, after all, less likely to harm themselves and others."
"If we have the power to intervene in the nature of our offspring — rather than consigning them to the natural lottery — then we should."
Should we consider genetically screening behavioural traits?
He said that we already routinely screen embryos and foetuses for conditions such as cystic fibrosis and Down’s syndrome and couples can test embryos for inherited bowel and breast cancer genes.
Rational design is just a natural extension of this, he said.
He said that unlike the eugenics movements, which fell out of favour when it was adopted by the Nazis, the system would be voluntary and allow parents to choose the characteristics of their children.
"We’re routinely screening embryos and foetuses for conditions such as cystic fibrosis and Down’s syndrome, and there’s little public outcry," he said.
"What’s more, few people protested at the decisions in the mid- 2000s to allow couples to test embryos for inherited bowel and breast cancer genes, and this pushes us a lot close to creating designer humans."
"Whether we like it or not, the future of humanity is in our hands now. Rather than fearing genetics, we should embrace it. We can do better than chance."
Full article appears in September issue of Reader’s Digest, out 21st August
video by BarryJBelmont
Spoiler Alert] If you want to stay in the dark about the gender of the Sapiens Anonym author (as I semi-wanted to), DO NOT WATCH THIS. However, if you want to watch an awesome lecture by THE leader of the DIY biohacking/"scrapheap transhumanism" movement, sit back, take a load off, and enjoy.
BERLIN - Lepht Anonym wants everyone to know the door to transcending normal human capabilities is no farther away than your own kitchen. It's just going to hurt like a sonofabitch.
BERLIN — Lepht Anonym wants everyone to know the door to transcending normal human capabilities is no farther away than your own kitchen. It’s just going to hurt like a sonofabitch.
An articulate advocate for practical transhumanism.
Anonym is a biohacker, a woman who has spent the last several years learning how to extend her own senses by putting tiny magnets and other electronic devices under her own skin, allowing her to feel electromagnetic fields, or — if her latest project works — even magnetic north.
Since doctors won’t help her, she does it in her own apartment, sterilizing her equipment (needles, scalpels, vegetable peelers) with vodka. Good anesthetic is largely impossible to buy, so she screams a little, and sometimes passes out. But it’s worth it, for what’s on the other side.
“Bodily health takes a big fuck-off second seat to curiosity,” she says. “Though it hasn’t really changed my life, it’s just made me more curious.”
This is DIY transhumanism, the fringe of a movement that itself lies well outside the mainstream of philosophy, ethics, technology and science.
For decades, transhumanists have argued that science and technology are approaching (or have approached) the point at which humans can take evolution into their own hands. They can transcend limitations of sensation or movement or even lifespan that are purely the accident of evolution. Some thinkers focus strictly on the “post-human” physical body, while others write of evolved social systems, as well.
Anonym’s vision of the transhuman is rather different. Less visionary, possibly, but more realistic. What she does is “grinding,” with homemade cybernetics and an intimate familiarity with medical mistakes, driven by a consuming curiosity rather than a philosophical creed.
She does her own surgery, with a scalpel and a spotter to catch her if she passes out, and an anatomy book to give her some confidence she isn’t going to slice through a vein or the very nerves she’s trying to enhance.
“The existing transhumanist movement is lame. It’s nano everything. It’s just ideas,” she says. “Anyone can do this. This is kitchen stuff.”
Visiting Berlin to speak at this week’s Chaos Computer Club Congress, Anonym proves to be witty and articulate, a slender woman with spiky black hair and dark makeup around her eyes. She has a way of moving as she talks that suggests thought is a kind of physical thing for her too, like the electromagnetic fields she can sense with her modified fingertips.
She has tattoos and piercings on her face, but there’s nothing obvious to indicate her practice — even her fingers look smooth and unscarred, though the metal discs can be felt faintly under one pad.
The Aberdeen, Scotland, native got her start about two years ago, experimenting first with RFID sensors under her skin that let her do things like lock a computer specifically to her signature. That was a decent start, but didn’t scratch the itch entirely. (Anyway, she says now, RFID is crap as a personal security system, it’s really only a way to experiment with the implant techniques.)
She moved on to trying a transdermal (emerging through the skin) temperature sensor, which would show a variable level of brightness to indicate the temperature. It was a disaster, she says. Mostly she learned rather uncomfortably that waterproofing is not the same as “bioproofing” something. She gave up quickly on the transdermal idea, but not the broader project.
An American body-modification artist of a similar mindset has created small metal discs of neodymium metal, coated in gold and silicon, which give off mild electric current when in a electromagnetic field. When inserted under the fingertips, this current stimulates the fingers’ nerve endings, allowing the bearer to literally feel the shape and strength of electromagnetic fields around power cords or electronic devices.
Anonym had several of these implanted professionally, choking at the cost, and then learned it was possible to buy the metal herself in bulk, far more cheaply.
So she began experimenting with homebrewed sensors. The metal itself is extremely toxic, so she needed a coating to bioproof it, finding a solution ultimately in a silicon putty-like substance called Sugru. But hot-gun glue works fine too, she says. (“I have lots of things in me coated in hot-gun glue,” she says.)
The upshot was an affordable way to continue — all 10 fingertips for about 20 British pounds. She has one left to go.
She’s calling her next project the “Southpaw.” It’s based on the Northpaw, a wearable device created by the Sensebridge group of wearable-electronics hackers. The Northpaw is worn around the ankle and gives a constant gentle motor-derived vibration on whichever side is facing north.
It’s not finished yet, but Anonym is trying to give something internal the same function — a small compass chip, a power coil that can be charged externally, and output in the form of neural-grade electrodes, all to be implanted near her left knee. It’s a much bigger project than her others, and probably riskier. She doesn’t care.
She wants other people to share her DIY vision. It’s not the full transhumanist idea, it’s not immortality or superpowers — but even living without the gentle sensation of feeling the invisible is a difficult thing to imagine, she says. One of the implants stopped functioning once, and she describes it as like going blind.
But it isn’t for everybody, this cutting yourself up in your own kitchen. She’s the first to warn people that it hurts. A lot. Every time, you don’t get used to it. Afterward, people may not be inclined to understand, to put it mildly. (“Avoid normal people,” she warns. “They’re stupid.”)
The medical consequences can be both severe and likely to elicit hostility from doctors. She’s put herself in the hospital several times. She nearly lost a fingertip the first time she tried to implant a neodymium disc herself. Various experiments with bioproofing have failed, with implants rusting under her skin, or her own self-surgeries turning septic.
But if that list of horrors isn’t enough to scare someone off, she’s also eager to help others avoid some of the mistakes she’s made in learning.
“You just have to get deep enough to open a hole and put something in,” she says. “It’s that simple.”
video by BarryJBelmont
Spoiler Alert] If you want to stay in the dark about the gender of the Sapiens Anonym author (as I semi-wanted to), DO NOT WATCH THIS. However, if you want to watch an awesome lecture by THE leader of the DIY biohacking/"scrapheap transhumanism" movement, sit back, take a load off, and enjoy.
video by BarryJBelmont
Spoiler Alert] If you want to stay in the dark about the gender of the Sapiens Anonym author (as I semi-wanted to), DO NOT WATCH THIS. However, if you want to watch an awesome lecture by THE leader of the DIY biohacking/"scrapheap transhumanism" movement, sit back, take a load off, and enjoy.
Cannon looks and moves a bit like Shaggy from Scooby Doo, a languid rubberband of a man in baggy clothes and a newsboy cap. Sarver, by contrast, stands ramrod straight, wearing a dapper three piece suit and waxed mustache, a dandy steampunk with a high pitched laugh. There is a distinct division of labor between the two: Cannon is the software developer and Sarver, who learned electrical engineering as a mechanic in the Air Force, does the hardware. The moniker for their working unit is Grindhouse Wetwares. Computers are hardware. Apps are software. Humans are wetware.
Cannon, like Sarver, served in the military, but the two didn’t meet until they had both left the service, introduced by a mutual friend in the Pittsburgh area. Politics brought them together. "We were both kind of libertarians, really strong anti-authority people, but we didn’t fit into the two common strains here: idiot anarchist who's unrealistic or right-wing crazy Christian. Nobody was incorporating technology into it. So there was no political party but just a couple like-minded individuals, who were like... techno-libertarians!"
Cannon got his own neodymium magnetic implant a year before Sarver. Putting these rare earth metals into the body was pioneered by artists on the bleeding edge of piercing culture and transhumanists interested in experimenting with a sixth sense. Steve Haworth, who specializing in the bleeding edge of body modification, and considers himself a "human evolution artist" is considered one of the originators, and helped to teach a generation of practitioners how to perform magnetic implants, including the owner of Hot Rod Piercing in Pittsburgh. (Using surgical tools like a scalpel is a grey area for piercers. Operating with these instruments, or any kind of anestheia, could be classified as practicing medicine. Without a medical license, a piercer who does this is technically committing assault on their person getting the implant.) On its own, the implant allows a person to feel electromagnetic fields: a microwave oven in their kitchen, a subway passing beneath the ground, or high tension power lines overhead.
While this added perception is interesting, it has little utility. But the magnet, explains Cannon is more of stepping stone towards bigger things. "It can be done cheaply, with minimally invasive surgery. You get used to the idea of having something alien in your body, and kinda begin to see how much more the human body could do with a little help. Sure, feeling other magnets around you is fucking cool, but the real key is, you’re giving the human body a simple, digital input."
As an example of how that might work, Cannon showed me a small device he and Sarver created called the Bottlenose. It’s a rectangle of black metal about half the size of a pack of cigarettes that slips over your finger. Named after the echolocation used by dolphins, it sends out an electromagnetic pulse and measures the time it take to bounce back. Cannon slips it over his finger and closes his eyes. "I can kind of sweep the room and get this picture of where things are." He twirls around the half empty basement, eyes closed, then stops, pointing directly at my chest. "The magnet in my finger is extremely sensitive to these waves. So the Bottlenose can tell me the shape of things around me and how far away they are."
The way Cannon sees it, biohacking is all around us. "In a way, eyeglasses are a body hack, a piece of equipment that enhances your sense, and pretty quickly becomes like a part of your body," says Cannon. He took a pair of electrodes off the workbench and attached them to my temples. "Your brain works through electricity, so why not help to boost that?" A sharp pinch ran across my forehead as the first volts flowed into my skull. He and Sarver laughed as my face involuntarily twitched. "You’re one of us now," Cannon says with a laugh.
Jaan Tallinn (credit: Singularity Institute)
Machines are becoming so intelligent that they could pose an existential threat, argues Skype founder Jaan Tallinn, Sidney Morning Herald reports.
Tallinn says human-driven technological progress has largely replaced evolution as the dominant force shaping our future as machines are becoming smarter than we are, so if we are not careful this could lead to a “sudden global ecological catastrophe”.
Computers to be better than us at classic games like chess, better drivers (Google’s driverless car being just one example), better at voice and face recognition and, as IBM’s Watson computer proved, even better at the game Jeopardy!.
The U.S. military is experimenting with robot fighter pilots, while the majority of trading on the stock market is done by computers with algorithmic trading.
“Once computers can program, they basically take over technological progress because already today the majority of technological progress is run by software, by programming.” The question then is, how can you control something that can actually reprogram itself?
“What we have to realize is designing super intelligence is not a typical technology project because a typical technology project is something where we develop a first version of something and refine it. We can’t do that with super intelligence because in order to refine a first version of super intelligence, you have to basically kill or turn off the first version but if this thing is smarter than you, how do you turn it off?”
“If you build machines that understand what humans are and they really have some distorted view of what we want, then we might end up being alive but not controlling the future,” he said. ”For example if the skill is to make sure that people are happy and the way the super intelligence is supposed to measure that is how many smiles are on the planet, the easiest way to achieve that is to sedate everyone and make sure their faces are stuck in a cramp or smiling.”
The alternative is to harness super intelligence to work for us. ”Once you have something that is smarter than you and is actively on your side, you can basically solve any problems really quickly.”
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