Biohacking, Here Come the Cyborgs

For me, 2015 has been the year of the quantified self.

I’ve been tracking my activity using various wearables: Nike+ Fuelband, Basis Peak, Jawbone UP24, Fitbit Surge, and currently, Garmin Vivosmart. I just set up Automatic to track my driving; check out Ben’s review for details. I couldn’t attend QS15, but luckily, Thao (@thaobnguyen) and Ben went and provided a complete download.

And, naturally, I’m fascinated by biohacking because, at its core, it’s the same idea, i.e. how to improve/modify the body to do more, better, faster.

Professor Kevin Warwick of the University of Reading

Ever since I read about RFID chip implanting in the early 00s, I’ve been curiously observing from the fringe. This post on the Verge today included a short video about biohacking that was well worth 13 and half minutes.

If you like that, check out the long-form piece, Cyborg America: inside the strange new world of basement body hackers.

This stuff is fascinating to me. People like Kevin Warwick and Steve Mann have modified themselves for the better, but I’m guessing the future of biohacking lies in healthcare and military applications, places where there’s big money to be made.

My job is to look ahead, and I love doing that. At some point during this year, Tony asked me what the future held; what were my thoughts on the next big things in technology.

I think the human body is the next frontier for technology. It’s an electrical source that could solve the modern battery woes we all have; it’s an enormous source for data collection, and you can’t forget it in a cab or on a plane. At some point, because we’ll be so dependent on it, technology will become parasitic.

And I for one, welcome the cyborg overlords.

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