[ExI] "Transcending the Human, DIY Style"

Bryan Bishop kanzure at gmail.com
Sun Jan 2 20:56:53 UTC 2011


On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 1:27 PM, Bryan Bishop wrote:

> DIY transhumanism is super important to me, so hopefully I'd like to help
> put the Wired article (with the pseudonymed person @lepht_anonym) into
> perspective and share with the DIYbio community.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2011 12:47:24
From: Eric Boyd <mrericboyd at yahoo.com>
To: "cyborg at lists.noisebridge.net" <cyborg at lists.noisebridge.net>, "Bryan
Bishop" <kanzure at gmail.com>
Subject: [Cyborg] Fwd: [Body Hacking] "Transcending the Human, DIY Style"

Response (see forwarded conversation below) to Lepht's Wired article on
the body hacking list.  This was also cross-posted to like half of the
transhumanist world.  Thought you guys might want to see it.

Despite comments below, my understanding is that Lepht has never
actually implanted the North Paw (or anything approaching it).  She's
talked about it, and I think she did once implanted a motor, but she
discovered (unsurprisingly) that transdermal implants are very difficult
to take care of.  She has plans to make a super-small version using
neuroelectrodes and induction power transfer, but she lacks the
electrical engineering skills to push that project forward on her own.
So either she gets help, or it's going to be a slow project as she
learns those skills...

If I was Lepht, it'd focus first on making a wearable version of the
electrode-based North Paw.  Once she's got it wearable and the code all
nice and cleaned up, and wireless reprogramming working, only then it is
even remotely thinkable to implant it.  I'd probably also prototype a
little first: maybe a single implanted neuroelectrode/induction pad,
using a PWM signal for North.  If that holds up for a bit, then go for
the 8-electrode version... frankly I'm glad I'm not not Lepht, because
pain and blood scare the shit out of me.

I am of course a strong advocate of "DIY transhumanism" myself.  My
personal angle of approach is wearable electronics.  I think it's a very
approachable path to transhumanism, and totally reachable from a
hobbyist level right now.  I think there is enough risk in the wearables
stuff: our understanding of brain plasticity is pretty weak.  One of the
reasons that I did the North Paw project is that I wanted to know if
e.g. the withdrawal symptoms from wearing such a device would be
significant.  They are not, but I didn't know that before I began, and
that's what risk means...

Eric
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20110102/ae76e3a2/attachment.html>


More information about the extropy-chat mailing list