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?
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.
Dr. Geekenstein, I Presume
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 rockstar 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.
Is a DIYborg Really a
Cyborg?
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 here: (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, Here
We Come
Aside from DIYborgs, there are also apparently eyeborgs, ala Geordi
LaForge of Star Trek fame. This was the
character in the Next Generation series played by LeVar Burton. Having been born blind, Geordi sported a pair
of high tech spectacles that not only permitted him to see, he could see light
spectra that no human eye could, including infrared, ultraviolet and radio
waves. While today’s version of Star
Trek tech isn’t quite as extraordinary as that of Geordi LaForge, it’s getting
there. Scientists have already
reverse-engineered the retina and created an app that not only reproduces its
operation, but it allows a camera to be connected through the optic nerve. In principle, this enhancement could be used
to augment the tiny fraction of the light spectrum we currently are able to
see. Holy x-ray vision, Batman! (Another group in England is conducting
experiments with an implantable lens that can not only provide perfect 20/20
vision to all you who wear glasses, but they claim the lens even provides a
zoom capability.)
Do You Want Fries
with That?
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. In a 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.
“No question, it would have to be when I hooked up with
my wife.” He’s not talking about dating:
In 2002, he and his wife Irena installed matching implants that recorded signals
from their central nervous systems. They
were able to correctly identify each other’s nerve signals around 98% of the
time.
“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.” http://www.forbes.com/sites/netapp/2013/09/30/kevin-warwick-captain-cyborg/
Like Steve Hawaorth’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, just as advances in medicine in the past, such
as joint replacement and transplantation have become commonplace, I can’t help
thinking that somewhere the ghost of Mary Shelley is spinning in her grave.
“It’s Alive!”
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
