The thought of having technological implants inside your body might make your skin crawl, but a group of 'grinders' are already doing it and say it'll be the norm soon.
Tim Cannon is an American software developer and entrepreneur who co-founded Grindhouse Wetworks, a company which allows people to undergo risky medical procedures to put technology in the human body.
He's a biohacker or grinder - someone who has a variety of body modification implants, including an RFID tag in his hand and magnetic implants in a finger, wrist, and ear. He believes we have a moral imperative to change and improve the human being.
Cannon tells Kathryn Ryan his first implant was the magnet in his ring finger which he got after hearing he would be able to feel electromagnetic fields.
“It was more fascinating than I thought it would be, so when I did that the curiosity only led to more curiosity.”
He says that regular magnets feel soft and fuzzy whereas electricity feels spiky.
“You’ll find that there’s kind of dialects of electricity… electricity actually feels different at different places.”
Cannon also has an implant on his arm that takes his body temperature every five seconds which he has hooked up to the thermostat in his house so that his house is heated or cooled automatically when he’s hot or cold.
More than the “internet of things”, it’s the “internet of us” he says. But he’s aware of how others might view it.
“I’m not divorced from the understanding that this is extreme and that many people would look at it and say ‘I’m not quite ready for that’. However, there’s always been people who are excited about the future and excited about early technology and really want a chance to dive in there and experience probably even the hardships in learning the technology and finding out what it is that is going to make this useful and what things we don’t know about how it’s going to be used that you can only find out through interacting with the technology.
“That’s something that’s always being my motivation; I love doing this and finding these new and unexpected things that come out of doing the research and interacting with technology. For me, it is always about curiosity but I understand other people might not be ready to go along for that ride. Once it’s ready for prime time, it’ll be obvious as opposed to something you have to convince someone of.”
Cannon and his ilk believe that people have the right to change themselves as they see fit and take matters into their own hands feeling that government and medical institutions are too stifling and slow.
“We’ve taken the risk to test that technology and we feel it’s more ethical to test it on ourselves instead of, say, taking a brand new drug and testing it on end-of-life patients who are vulnerable.”
The grinder community’s ethos is to mitigate as much risk as possible, and inform patients of the risk that remains so that they can make the most fully informed decision possible about whether to undergo procedure.
“This is something that is risky and we make no qualms about that.”
Grinders are very much ensconced in the hacking community and subscribe to the same beliefs about privacy and keeping data out of the hands of big corporations.
“A big piece of what we do is say that as this technology goes from outside our bodies to integrated with ourself, it’s going to be all the more important to focus on the user’s autonomy and freedom and privacy as these corporations hone in on trying to get this data. You can imagine what an insurance company would do with 100 percent clarity into somebody’s life and the ways in which they could take advantage of that for example. We wouldn’t want to create something that would cause that sort of problem.”
Performance artist Stelarc with his third ear. Photo: supplied
One of the reasons Cannon and other grinders are working on developing the tech now, is so that they can “poison the well” for big corporations when they arrive. They’re attempting to establish system where work will have to be done honestly and through open source technology by beginning with those standards.
He says big corporations such as Google and Microsoft are already looking into the technology. Elon Musk, a few years ago, bought out a company called Neuralink which promises to link brains with computers.
“I’ve talked to several companies that have had me consult or asked questions about what’s possible. It’s definitely on the minds of just about everybody. In fact, they’re basically trying to figure out what the new marketing terminology for it is; you have mobiles, you have wearables, people don’t like the term implantable, so the one that’s starting to emerge is invisibles.”
If it sounds farfetched, Sweden’s bus system is already allowing people to tap on and tap off with an implanted chip in their hand. Cannon says it’s becoming more and more accepted.
“It really does make a lot of sense because, at the end of the day, when you think about things that require your identification or for you to have authenticity or authenticate, really you should be the key. You should be the thing doing the authenticating and it should be something integral to you, rather than something losable or stealable.
Currently he and his team are working on an implant for cattle. It will be able to take their heart rate, blood pressure, temperature and being able to diagnose whether they’re sick, calving, or developing disease.
“It’s partially for animal welfare reasons, because we really do want to improve the lives of these animals, and partially to assist farmers in getting the most efficient farm and reducing their costs and maximising profits.”
He says the sensors are quite simple and have been around for a long time.
“One of the things I tell people is I’m not a mad scientist, I’m a mad engineer. I take existing technology that’s already been there and repackage it and test it and show that it can be working effectively inside the body and that being closer to those data sources you’re trying to analyse is easier, better, and lower power consumption.”
In a development that might excite local farmers when he brings it to the Boma Agrisummit in Christchurch this April, Cannon says that not only would tracking cattle movements be made simple, if disease were to spread the technology would allow you to locate the origin of it to a specific place on a specific farm. He says farmers would then be able to locate the source and address it directly.
A similar application might appeal to humans where, by having an implant, they could reveal to their doctor a clear picture of their health. He says people could ask their doctors to look at specific moments, such as when they felt unwell the day before, and doctors would be able to pull up that information and analyse it.
He says it could also lead to proactive, rather than reactionary, healthcare wherein people will be able to see problems arise even before symptoms do and take preventative measures or have early treatment.
Currently, there are people in the community looking at insulin pumps and how they could measure blood levels to pump insulin at precisely the right moment to create a closed feedback loop.
However, Cannon is fully aware of how the technology could be misused and says we have to be vigilant.
“We as a citizenry have more power than we give ourselves credit for and we need to use that power and flex that power to make sure that the people who would use this stuff for nefarious reasons are held accountable and prevented.”
In terms of how far the technology can go, Cannon says in his most whimsical moments he imagines being 100 percent artificial.
“At that point, you’re free. You’re able to be immortal and whatever it is you want, you can fit into any vessel you want. If you want to plumb the depths of Europa or go into the vacuum of space, you can do those things.”
“At its furtherest out, we would eventually be 100 percent artificial and infinitely super-intelligent and capable.”
