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posted by janrinok on Thursday November 17 2016, @08:54AM   Printer-friendly
from the wired-for-health dept.

A man with metal horns protruding from his forehead and a split tongue poking out between his teeth advanced toward me with a scalpel. "I've never done this before," he joked, inching closer.

A full-sleeve tattoo snaked out from beneath his black T-shirt, extending from a demon on his bicep to a skull on his fist. My eyes darted between skull and scalpel, then instinctively shut as I cringed, bracing for contact. Zack Watson, the inked-up body modification artist I'd hired — and drove seven hours from New York City to see — was about to sew a magnet under my skin.
...
Biohacking enthusiasts have tinkered with electronic tattoos and subdermal — underneath-the-skin — implants for two decades, sharing their efforts in videos on YouTube and internet forums to spread and encourage innovation. Proponents believe smart implants represent the future of wearable technology, potentially making humans healthier and more efficient while providing new opportunity to consumer-technology companies such as Apple Inc. AAPL, -0.34% and Alphabet Inc. GOOGL, -0.71% GOOG, -0.57% that are investing heavily in technology that could revolutionize health care.

All of these predictions [quoted in the article] come as global adoption of wearables is forecast to boom. Juniper Research, which tracks consumer technology trends, expects world-wide wearable shipments to reach 420 million by 2020, more than four times the 80 million shipped in 2015. A similar surge is predicted for medical devices, with shipments projected to triple to 70 million over the next four years.

Trans-humanism has been around for a while, but the article focuses on the investment capital that is now flowing into the area.


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  • (Score: 2) by t-3 on Thursday November 17 2016, @01:17PM

    by t-3 (4907) on Thursday November 17 2016, @01:17PM (#428088)

    Does it ever interfere with electronics or credit cards?

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  • (Score: 1) by Magneto on Thursday November 17 2016, @01:35PM

    by Magneto (6410) on Thursday November 17 2016, @01:35PM (#428093)

    In general no. I've had an external HDD fail since I got it done but as I deal with a fair number of them for work I expect that was just bad luck. I've not had any problems with cards of any sort.

    There are 2 cases I can think of where it's effected electronics. The first case is airport security where I've set off the metal detectors despite not having any other metal on me. It confused the staff when they waved me down with a hand held wand and didn't pick up anything. Of course they didn't run it over my hand as I was wearing a short sleeved shirt and it was obvious there was nothing in my hands.

    The second is a day to day example. I have a nexus tablet which has some sort of magnetic sensor in it which is meant to detect whether it's in a case and put it to sleep if it is. When I hold the tablet in the wrong way my finger rests next to the sensor and the screen turns off. It's a not a major issue as I can just hold the tablet in a different way but it took a bit of getting used to.