V--related: Transcending the Human, DIY Style

[Ian Livingston]

Oh, my! Well, I've heard that women--especially those who've given birth the
old-fashioned way, without drugs & scalpels, etc--have a very high pain
tolerance. Nevertheless, I know Buddhist meditators who claim to have the
same sensitivities these folks claim w/o the risk of infection, loss of
limb, and all. The risk of poverty is, however, considerable, as it takes
years of mind-training to develop first the sensitivity, then the knowledge
of what is sensed. It takes much longer than a Ph.D. program in most
universities, and you don't get paid (even upon mastering these little
tricks), just fed, and that in moderation. Point is, it ain't really
"trans-human", what these folks do; it's just weird. But, maybe it will
help, like homosexuality, nutrient-free foods, and war to help curtail
overpopulation, which is the actual source of so many of our contemporary
woes.

On Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 6:52 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
>
>
>  Transcending the Human, DIY Style
>
>    - By John Borland<http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/author/johnborland/> [image:
>    Email Author] <john.borland at gmail.com>
>    - December 30, 2010  |
>    - 12:43 pm  |
>    - Categories: Chaos Computer Club<http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/category/chaos-computer-club/>
>    -
>
>  BERLIN — Lepht Anonym wants everyone to know the door to transcending
> normal human capabilities is no farther away than your own kitchen. It’s
> just going to hurt like a sonofabitch.
> <http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/12/transcending-the-human-diy-style/anonym2/>
>
> An articulate advocate for practical transhumanism.
>
> Anonym is a biohacker, a woman who has spent the last several years
> learning how to extend her own senses by putting tiny magnets and other
> electronic devices under her own skin, allowing her to feel electromagnetic
> fields, or — if her latest project works — even magnetic north.
>
> Since doctors won’t help her, she does it in her own apartment, sterilizing
> her equipment (needles, scalpels, vegetable peelers) with vodka. Good
> anesthetic is largely impossible to buy, so she screams a little, and
> sometimes passes out. But it’s worth it, for what’s on the other side.
>
> “Bodily health takes a big fuck-off second seat to curiosity,” she says.
> “Though it hasn’t really changed my life, it’s just made me more curious.”
>
> This is DIY transhumanism, the fringe of a movement that itself lies well
> outside the mainstream of philosophy, ethics, technology and science.
>
> For decades, transhumanists have argued that science and technology are
> approaching (or have approached) the point at which humans can take
> evolution into their own hands. They can transcend limitations of sensation
> or movement or even lifespan that are purely the accident of evolution. Some
> thinkers focus strictly on the “post-human” physical body, while others
> write of evolved social systems, as well.
>
> Anonym’s vision of the transhuman is rather different. Less visionary,
> possibly, but more realistic. What she does is “grinding,” with homemade
> cybernetics and an intimate familiarity with medical mistakes, driven by a
> consuming curiosity rather than a philosophical creed.
>
> She does her own surgery, with a scalpel and a spotter to catch her if she
> passes out, and an anatomy book to give her some confidence she isn’t going
> to slice through a vein or the very nerves she’s trying to enhance.
>
> “The existing transhumanist movement is lame. It’s nano everything. It’s
> just ideas,” she says. “Anyone can do this. This is kitchen stuff.”
>
> Visiting Berlin to speak at this week’s Chaos Computer Club Congress<http://events.ccc.de/congress/2010/wiki/Main_Page>,
> Anonym proves to be witty and articulate, a slender woman with spiky black
> hair and dark makeup around her eyes. She has a way of moving as she talks
> that suggests thought is a kind of physical thing for her too, like the
> electromagnetic fields she can sense with her modified fingertips.
>
> She has tattoos and piercings on her face, but there’s nothing obvious to
> indicate her practice — even her fingers look smooth and unscarred, though
> the metal discs can be felt faintly under one pad.
>
> The Aberdeen, Scotland, native got her start about two years ago,
> experimenting first with RFID sensors under her skin that let her do things
> like lock a computer specifically to her signature. That was a decent start,
> but didn’t scratch the itch entirely. (Anyway, she says now, RFID is crap as
> a personal security system, it’s really only a way to experiment with the
> implant techniques.)
>
> She moved on to trying a transdermal (emerging through the skin)
> temperature sensor, which would show a variable level of brightness to
> indicate the temperature. It was a disaster, she says. Mostly she learned
> rather uncomfortably that waterproofing is not the same as “bioproofing”
> something. She gave up quickly on the transdermal idea, but not the broader
> project.
>
> An American body-modification artist<http://www.stevehaworth.com/wordpress/>of a similar mindset has created small metal discs of
> neodymium <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neodymium> metal, coated in gold
> and silicon, which give off mild electric current when in a electromagnetic
> field. When inserted under the fingertips, this current stimulates the
> fingers’ nerve endings, allowing the bearer to literally feel the shape and
> strength of electromagnetic fields around power cords or electronic devices.
>
> Anonym had several of these implanted professionally, choking at the cost,
> and then learned it was possible to buy the metal herself in bulk, far more
> cheaply.
>
> So she began experimenting with homebrewed sensors. The metal itself is
> extremely toxic, so she needed a coating to bioproof it, finding a solution
> ultimately in a silicon putty-like substance called Sugru. But hot-gun glue
> works fine too, she says. (“I have lots of things in me coated in hot-gun
> glue,” she says.)
>
> The upshot was an affordable way to continue — all 10 fingertips for about
> 20 British pounds. She has one left to go.
>
> She’s calling her next project the “Southpaw.” It’s based on the Northpaw<http://sensebridge.net/projects/northpaw/>,
> a wearable device created by the Sensebridge group of wearable-electronics
> hackers. The Northpaw is worn around the ankle and gives a constant gentle
> motor-derived vibration on whichever side is facing north.
>
> It’s not finished yet, but Anonym is trying to give something internal the
> same function — a small compass chip, a power coil that can be charged
> externally, and output in the form of neural-grade electrodes, all to be
> implanted near her left knee. It’s a much bigger project than her others,
> and probably riskier. She doesn’t care.
>
> She wants other people to share her DIY vision. It’s not the full
> transhumanist idea, it’s not immortality or superpowers — but even living
> without the gentle sensation of feeling the invisible is a difficult thing
> to imagine, she says. One of the implants stopped functioning once, and she
> describes it as like going blind.
>
> But it isn’t for everybody, this cutting yourself up in your own kitchen.
> She’s the first to warn people that it hurts. A lot. Every time, you don’t
> get used to it. Afterward, people may not be inclined to understand, to put
> it mildly. (“Avoid normal people,” she warns. “They’re stupid.”)
>
> The medical consequences can be both severe and likely to elicit hostility
> from doctors. She’s put herself in the hospital several times. She nearly
> lost a fingertip the first time she tried to implant a neodymium disc
> herself. Various experiments with bioproofing have failed, with implants
> rusting under her skin, or her own self-surgeries turning septic.
>
> But if that list of horrors isn’t enough to scare someone off, she’s also
> eager to help others avoid some of the mistakes she’s made in learning.
>
> “You just have to get deep enough to open a hole and put something in,” she
> says. “It’s that simple.”
>
>
>
>
> -
>
>


-- 
"liber enim librum aperit."
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