I'm only guessing, but I think the reason it's soo big is because they want it to be "DIY" and a bluetooth-module and wireless-recharging module cannot be made much smaller, not to forget that thing also needs to have a battery that can hold out long enough!
I am not put off by the DIY surgery or the size of the computer. But I was astonished by this line: 'the chip can record Cannon's body temperature and transfer it in real time via Bluetooth.' If I would attempt such a thing like this I would make sure it could do a lot more!
Yeah, and upgrades... I'm quite sure an intuitive requirement of cyborgitzation involves the capacity to "expand" or viably upgrade added Enhancements. This looks like a grueling effort for a Terminal Enhancement.
Does it really even need to be under the skin to accomplish its feature-set? I mean, if the margin of error is increased only slightly, stay above. The cost of going under the skin just does not seem worth it.
This seems like a romantic thrust toward "looking" cyborg, regardless of the actual scope of the feature-set.
I certainly agree with that, it seems the only two functions of the implant are measuring the temperature and making light up his arm a little bit.
I am however curious to see how this project will advance, will he be able to use his arm like he did before, won't it affect his health in any way... how about heath generated by the device itself...
But being honest about it, this is cool! I always imagined with the current technologies (think google glass, thalmic's myo, current smartphones) we will come very soon to a time where wearable computers will make our live much easier, the only bottleneck seems to be we haven't got batteries that could last longer than a day and power such a device.
You'd be surprised how limited you are once you get a piercing. A simple piercing.
I got one at the eyebrow, I loved it (and especially the ladies my age) but you have to restrain yourself a lot. You can't bump into someone, you cannot really sleep on your head, you have to take care when you're taking off your Tshirt, or when you're washing your face, drying your face, wearing glasses, and on and on.
The functionality doesn't seem to be greater than that of wearable sensors. It does get people's attention though and like good art, makes you think. Where's your threshold? What would it need to do before you'd be willing to take the risk? Are there better locations for the device? What about upgrades and recharging? Their way works but what's better? Definitely a useful exercise.
It can read his body temperature and send it via bluetooth. It also has 3 status leds. Now honestly, the question really is, why is this so large? You can easily get a temperature sensor and logger along with a small battery that would be the size of a coin in total. Since it has wireless connectivity he could just transmit status over that instead of using leds? It looks far, far too large for what it does...
Part of the reason it's huge is that it's a body-modification. That's an aesthetic choice. It could be made smaller, but then people don't see it, and so what's the point of having it? With a huge lump under your arm people say "What's that huge lump?" and you can then talk about how you're a cyborg.
In the UK getting someone else to help you is putting that person at risk of serious legal problems. Probably around the assault or grievous bodily harm.
Gibson said something like 30 years ago (about implantable watches) "Why don't they just carry it around in a pocket?". I forget which book, and what the exact quote is, and I don't have them at this house to check. But if I want to know my temperature I'll use an infra-red thermometer in my ear.
I feel like the actual medical community is almost certainly working on technology like this that will actually be:
1) Useful.
2) Safe.
That'll be cool. As for what this guy's actually contributing... Not really sure.
(Other projects on their site also kind of sound like bullshit. For example:
"The idea is to stimulate your brain with direct current (in the case of tDCS) or with square waves of current (in the case of CES) which can either raise or lower the potential energy of the stimulated neurons, depending on the orientation of electrodes. This allows them to fire more or less easily, and activates or deactivates a given region, thus engaging certain brain states." -http://www.grindhousewetware.com/thinkingcap.html
Sounds like either pseudo-science or wishful thinking to me.)
At any rate, if these were researchers at Johns Hopkins, that'd be one thing. But I won't believe that this product does what they claim unless they do actual studies with it and post them on their site. But. I suspect they won't. Because I suspect they're using the Soylent scientific process: "We tried it on ourselves and it seems to work! And didn't kill us!"
That seems to be an article about using transcranial stimulation to treat major depression, but you're replying to something that didn't even mention major depression. Which specifically are you calling pseudoscience: using transcranial stimulation to treat major depression, or is the very belief that current can be routed through the skull the piece of pseudoscience here? Thanks.
What I said was "still more a wishful thinking and placebo than a proved method" and cited "a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized, double-blind and sham-controlled trials" which concludes "The clinical utility of tDCS as a treatment for MD remains unclear when clinically relevant outcomes such as response and remission rates are considered."
That means that I don't doubt that you can let the DC flow through your brain but that I believe that even 200 years after the first of such experiments it's still more wishful thinking and placebo than factually "double-blind and sham-controlled" proved that such treatments have some positive lasting effects. On another side, I wouldn't be surprised that some kind of short-term effects can be observed (although I must admit I'm unfamiliar with such, what I know is that yesterday I saw the article writing about the benefits of such treatments in the kind of magazine which also writes about chemtrails(!)). Can you please tell me which controlled studies you consider important?
They don't sound sexy, but these devices are now wireless sensor nodes with years of battery life. There are some next generation devices that are making their way onto the market as well, such as the Proteus Digital sensor[1] which was approved by the FDA last year.
I'm excited about progress in implantable technologies and also understand why their progress is seems slow--it takes a lot of work to ensure these devices are safe. That safety also necessitates a level of closedness for now: devices are only validated under carefully controlled conditions.
Efforts like this one, however, are incredibly unsafe. They endanger individuals while also making the DIY community look stupid.
Those are all cool, if you're sick or disabled in some way. What about for those of us who are healthy as a horse and want to supersede the natural state? What if I want to be able to sense EM fields, or put a sensor in me to monitor my sleep to avoid the hassle of a headband and a now-super-expensive Zeo, or put a bluetooth transmitter in me to ease data management between internal and external devices, or put a GPS sensor in me, or put a gyro&accelerometer in me that lets me do gestures independent of a wiimote or kinect, how about RFID in my hands and forehead?
Of course those things aren't the coolest imaginable, but some things I can imagine would be really quite hard with the limitations of flesh. I'm currently content to be hopeful for mind uploading, then using artificial/robotic/simulacratic bodies of various sizes with lots of neat features for the times a version of me wishes to explore meatspace...
Some body modification enthusiasts currently get significantly large silicon implants placed under the skin. The most common one appears to be synthetic horns, but large symbols in relief and larger abstract forms placed along muscles/against bone are also feasible. Note, when I say "feasible" I mean that no apparent reduction in function is caused by the implant.
In this fellow's case, it might even be a good idea for him to encapsulate a wireless unit within a silicon sheath to avoid any kind contamination. That could increase the bulk of the unit considerably.
This guy is crazy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R3hxcgvOTw#t=144 I think he is in it for the thrill. Not usable at all, much to big, better to just have a smartphone in your pocket. Or an arduino with sensors on your skin. Instead of implanting this.
I'm not clear why this is a story. This is hardly interesting from a technology standpoint even as a proof of concept.
I'm guessing it grabs peoples' attention based on the pain this person went through to perform surgery on himself, but this too doesn't strike me as a story.
>It’s also huge, since it comes with a battery pack that charges wirelessly.
This is one of the main problems with sub-dermal implants. You don't want anything trans-dermal, because it's a recipe for infection. But if it's sub-dermal, it not only needs to be biocompatible but also needs to wirelessly transmit data. This implies a need for a power source of some sort that won't overheat. I sincerely hope he's thought this through, because if that battery gets too hot, he's going to destroy a lot of tissue, to say nothing of how biocompatible the device is.
About time. The fact this can be done with "relative" safety needs to be publicized. It wont get safer or smaller until people make statements that there is a demand for such technology. And as to all the people going on about how foolish it is, right now with the legal, financial, and social barriers, this is the only way it can be done. And even smarter to do it while we still have effective antibiotics.
For people complaining it's big, the guy on reddit's futurology subreddit who helped design it said it was just the first step, it will shrink in size and grow in features.
Being that big and having a battery, I would have implanted a tiny mp3 player with a smallish speaker. Waay cooler (because to me he did it pretty much for the 'cool' factor).
The cyborgs I thought about as a kid were way cooler than this lameness. They talk about this like it's some history making implant that's never been done before, yet much more sophisticated implants for various ailments like ICDs are quite common.
A 10 year old with a cochlear implant is way more impressive than this.
47 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 101 ms ] threadI'm pretty sure the reason for the size is aesthetics, rather than requirement.
12-bit ADC onboard. Also two serial (SPI/UART) and an AES module.
Microcontrollers pack so much in these days.
Direct link to the article: http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/the-diy-cyborg
Spoiler: there are no pictures of the biohack surgery
Does it really even need to be under the skin to accomplish its feature-set? I mean, if the margin of error is increased only slightly, stay above. The cost of going under the skin just does not seem worth it.
This seems like a romantic thrust toward "looking" cyborg, regardless of the actual scope of the feature-set.
I am however curious to see how this project will advance, will he be able to use his arm like he did before, won't it affect his health in any way... how about heath generated by the device itself...
But being honest about it, this is cool! I always imagined with the current technologies (think google glass, thalmic's myo, current smartphones) we will come very soon to a time where wearable computers will make our live much easier, the only bottleneck seems to be we haven't got batteries that could last longer than a day and power such a device.
I got one at the eyebrow, I loved it (and especially the ladies my age) but you have to restrain yourself a lot. You can't bump into someone, you cannot really sleep on your head, you have to take care when you're taking off your Tshirt, or when you're washing your face, drying your face, wearing glasses, and on and on.
In the UK getting someone else to help you is putting that person at risk of serious legal problems. Probably around the assault or grievous bodily harm.
Gibson said something like 30 years ago (about implantable watches) "Why don't they just carry it around in a pocket?". I forget which book, and what the exact quote is, and I don't have them at this house to check. But if I want to know my temperature I'll use an infra-red thermometer in my ear.
1) Useful.
2) Safe.
That'll be cool. As for what this guy's actually contributing... Not really sure.
(Other projects on their site also kind of sound like bullshit. For example:
"The idea is to stimulate your brain with direct current (in the case of tDCS) or with square waves of current (in the case of CES) which can either raise or lower the potential energy of the stimulated neurons, depending on the orientation of electrodes. This allows them to fire more or less easily, and activates or deactivates a given region, thus engaging certain brain states." -http://www.grindhousewetware.com/thinkingcap.html
Sounds like either pseudo-science or wishful thinking to me.)
At any rate, if these were researchers at Johns Hopkins, that'd be one thing. But I won't believe that this product does what they claim unless they do actual studies with it and post them on their site. But. I suspect they won't. Because I suspect they're using the Soylent scientific process: "We tried it on ourselves and it seems to work! And didn't kill us!"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23084964
That means that I don't doubt that you can let the DC flow through your brain but that I believe that even 200 years after the first of such experiments it's still more wishful thinking and placebo than factually "double-blind and sham-controlled" proved that such treatments have some positive lasting effects. On another side, I wouldn't be surprised that some kind of short-term effects can be observed (although I must admit I'm unfamiliar with such, what I know is that yesterday I saw the article writing about the benefits of such treatments in the kind of magazine which also writes about chemtrails(!)). Can you please tell me which controlled studies you consider important?
* Pacemakers / Artificial hearts (Heart diseases)
* Cochlear implants / Bone anchored hearing aids (Deafness)
* Insulin pumps (Diabetes)
* Deep brain stimulators (Parkinson's)
* Wireless gastrointestinal probes (GI disease/cancer)
They don't sound sexy, but these devices are now wireless sensor nodes with years of battery life. There are some next generation devices that are making their way onto the market as well, such as the Proteus Digital sensor[1] which was approved by the FDA last year.
I'm excited about progress in implantable technologies and also understand why their progress is seems slow--it takes a lot of work to ensure these devices are safe. That safety also necessitates a level of closedness for now: devices are only validated under carefully controlled conditions.
Efforts like this one, however, are incredibly unsafe. They endanger individuals while also making the DIY community look stupid.
[1] http://www.proteus.com/proteus-digital-health-announces-fda-...
Of course those things aren't the coolest imaginable, but some things I can imagine would be really quite hard with the limitations of flesh. I'm currently content to be hopeful for mind uploading, then using artificial/robotic/simulacratic bodies of various sizes with lots of neat features for the times a version of me wishes to explore meatspace...
I'm guessing it grabs peoples' attention based on the pain this person went through to perform surgery on himself, but this too doesn't strike me as a story.
This is one of the main problems with sub-dermal implants. You don't want anything trans-dermal, because it's a recipe for infection. But if it's sub-dermal, it not only needs to be biocompatible but also needs to wirelessly transmit data. This implies a need for a power source of some sort that won't overheat. I sincerely hope he's thought this through, because if that battery gets too hot, he's going to destroy a lot of tissue, to say nothing of how biocompatible the device is.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1ohqpl/this_is_t...
He also said it's just temporary, for 3 months.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1ohqpl/this_is_t...
A 10 year old with a cochlear implant is way more impressive than this.