There are many biomedical tools that have been invented to aid us in day to day life without us having to think about them. Many of these innovations have been available for use for many years. Unfortunately many of these dystopian-like technologies are not well known because of the skepticism many people have. Biohacking and tech-progressivism aren't new concepts. They are both stemmed from the transhumanism philosophy. In Calvin Mercer's book, Religion and Transhumanism, he explains transhumanism as
An international and intellectual movement that aims to transform the human condition by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies to greatly enhance human intellect and physiology.
Biohacking, according to this article is the perspective is that you can hack your own biology, and gain control of systems in your body that you wouldn't have access to otherwise. Biohacking essentially optimizes a human being, to higher potential with the use of technological tools and implants.
There are various prototypes and technologies that have been on the market for quite a few years. There are biometric tattoos which can be removed like temporary tattoos, and while they are on your skin they can report back information about your body. They can detect everything from poisons in the air, to body temperature, stress and hydration levels.
There are pills that can monitor most of your internal processes and sends the data wirelessly. This pill has been imbedded with a chip and once ingested connects wirelessly to a small patch worn on your body which in turn sends data to your smart phone via bluetooth or wi-fi and even your doctor if you chose. A few examples of what these sensor-enabled tablets monitor included heart rate, body temperature, posture, respiration, interactions with medicine and sleeping patterns.
With this range of biohacking technologies, the most common is a tiny RFID Chip which stands for Radio Frequency IDentification. This chip is implanted into your skin between your thumb and pointer finger. Implanting this little device has been shown to be as harmless as a shot. With that being said, ironically you can actually purchase a kit for an RFID chip along with various other biohacking tools on an online store called Dangerous Things. RFID chips can be programmed to do all types of things. A few examples include allowing you to access private files on your android phone, paying for a bus fare, and opening up digitally locked doors without having a card or key. A Swedish company called epicenter allows workers and start up members who work from their building to use this implant to gain to access the building and printers, along with purchasing food and drinks with just a sweep of their hand. BBC then wrote an article about the employees titled, The rise of the Swedish cyborgs.
There are many stances on the transhumanism philosophy. It's has even been looked at as the world's most dangerous ideal, which is validly argued by Nick Bostrom, and a wonderful read. I think that with every philosophy, comes an extremist approach. Which in turn comes with individuals justifying their poor actions despite the original philosopher's ideals.
After having a discussion with @mughat, @iamnotageek, @seablue and a few other individuals about philosophies on the SteemSpeak Discord yesterday, I realized that I don't follow one main philosophy. I take bits and pieces from the ones I like. Which I understand might be viewed as having ideals or principals that are contradicting.
That being said, along with a loose objectivism ideal I think transhumanism is a philosophy that will have to be inevitably accepted as technology improves at a faster and faster pace. It's important to advocate the development of medical and technological tools that will everyday human functions like memory, concentration, and even life span. Biohacking is just one of the very many ways we can do that.
The tradeoff for these types of biohacking tools is simple concept, increase of daily task efficiency and ease of use at the expense of putting personal information at risk. As Thomas Jefferson once put it, with great risk comes great reward. That being said, this isn't a new concept. There's are many pets that live with the same microchip implant for locating purposes if they ever ran away or got lost.
Where do you stand on the ideal of transhumanism? Do you think biohacking is going to be a concept we're inevitably going to have to accept? After falling down the rabbit hole of this topic and reading about it all day, I'd love to hear some different perspectives!
xo,
Lauren