Bio-hacking: Are Cyborgs the future?

Thinking caps, magnet implants and LEDs under your skin – these are not just part of a sci-fi movie. These are all coming to a neighbour near you in the not so distant future. Bio-Hacking has been featured on Gizmodo, Verge and recently, on Ripley’s Believe It or Not. But unfortunately, there is only one known bio-hacking company: GrindHouse Wetware. And surely, not all technologies make it through (sorry Google Glass).
Is bio-hacking the future? Let us see.

AI – The Pedal for Transhumanism

Gary Kasparov – in 1996 – was the smartest chess brain on the planet. But only until IBM’s Deep Blue beat him. And if you didn’t know, Deep Blue was a computer!

It was our first realization, that our own computers could beat us. Not merely in chess, but – soon enough – in almost everything. After all, as Intel’s co-founder Robert Moore demonstrated: every year computer processors become twice as fast. Soon, a single iPhone could be smarter than all of humanity. Boom! – what do we do now?

To avoid being dominated by future machines, we’ll turn to bio-hacking. People will put chips into their brains, replace digestive system with a better one, or implant prosthetic legs for a better run! But biohacking is relatively new – can we expect it in near-future?

Trans-humanism in the near future

As Tim Cannon of GrindHouse Wetware said in an interview, bio-hacking will face resistance. And even if it doesn’t, the technology isn’t all that mature either. LED implants and putting magnets under your fingers are about the extent of current capabilities, and those surgeries look creepy.

Making this technology safer and more lucrative than just LED lights will take time. Perhaps 10 or more years by most estimations.

What will help is the advancement of robotics and technology. Only when prosthetic legs get better than real ones, will people will consider “upgrading” – not today. But as technology keeps improving daily – eventually, transhumanism will be inevitable. Ray Kurzweil predicts this to be 2030, and I see no reason to disagree.

What else to expect from the future?

The future is coming with a flurry of exciting things. Prosthetic legs are just the tip of iceberg. Our intestines will be replaced by better and more efficient ones. We’ll be able to upload our consciousness online. And as computers keep getting smarter, we’ll start to improve our brains too!

This is not just me typing for the heck of typing with hopes you like how the words are put together. This comes from somebody, whom Bill Gates calls the “most accurate futurists” – Ray Kurzweil. Kurzweil has predicted future before – and has done so accurately. If he is sure, I wouldn’t doubt him! In short – bio-hacking is the future (but not just yet).