Category Archives: Transhuman

Tycho first heard about crypto back in the Silk Road days, calling the underground marketplace the coolest thing in the world at the time. Now, decidedly legit, hes launching his own Tycho Open Source Community using Polygon NFTs.

Tycho says he bought his first hardware wallet in 2011, but didnt put Bitcoin on it. In an interview with Decrypt, the artistalso known as Scott Hansen, or ISO50 from his blogging days in the aughtsshared the story of how he got into crypto and Web3.

In 2016, he bought Ethereum and vowed to never sell it, just to see what happened with it.

We should get this thing Ethereum, he recalled telling musician Jakub Alexander at the time while on tour. Bitcoin is old school but Ethereum, this things cool.

He then all but forgot about his crypto for years as he kept making music and visual art. Hansen designed all the graphics for his albums and engineered his distinct melodic, ethereal electronic soundmusic which earned him two Grammy nominations.

Our pact was that we should never sell any of it, and see what happens with it, he said of the ETH hes still hodling today.

In 2021, Hansen released some NFTs on Nifty Gateway and OpenSea, which he calls a learning experience. Inspired by the likes of Beeple, Justin Blau (3lau), and artist Reuben Wu, Hansen sees Web3 and crypto as a great fit for his community.

We knew each other from speaking at graphic design conferences back in the day, Hansen said of Beeple, who recently collaborated with Madonna on an NSFW NFT collection.

Tychos communitywhich he says includes VFX artists, musicians, and other graphic designerswas first formed in the blogosphere but has since spread to a token-gated Discord server.

Given its collaborative and professional members, its not unlike the one music producer Illmind is also building through NFTs with his Squad of Knights, which offers holders IRL perks like recording studio space and musical collaboration opportunities.

Hansen sees Web3 as a way for artists to get rid of the middleman of social media.

Web2 social media platforms came around and kind of hijacked this whole thing, Hansen said of how social media changed internet communities. It doesnt really feel like a two-way street anymore.

When he learned about Medallion, a full-service crypto platform, Hansen was intrigued. He said he started working with the company because he found their terms appealing.

What is interesting to me about the Web3 space and leveraging Web3 to this end is, with Patreon, youre just creating a login, Hansen said.

But with his Open Source community, which grants holders access to things like advance album listening parties, and livestreams, the artist owns the data.

Hansen said he always wants the NFTswhich act as access tokensto be free, while additional perks might cost money or crypto in the future.

I think this was the endgame, to create this kind of community space, this Web3 community, Hansen said.

As for whether Hansen will release any music NFTs under his Tycho alias in the future, its something he says hes exploring. Hansen told Decrypt he has a couple releases on the horizon that he might turn into music NFTs, but that he doesnt have concrete plans yet.

When asked why electronic artists like Steve Aoki, 3lau, deadmau5, Dillon Francis, and himself are so open to Web3 compared to artists in other genres, Hansen has a few ideas.

Electronic musicians in general [] have to be somewhat technically adept to even be able to get into it, and I think youre probably pretty interested in technology just as a general concept anyways if youre getting into this kind of music, he said.

As someone with a background in computer science, digital graphic design, and electronic music, Web3 and crypto felt like a natural thing for Hansen to explore.

In his view, Web3 hasnt leveled the playing fieldits still hard for new musicians to find successbut he believes Web3 will eventually become the norm.

Im not looking at it [...] as this utopian vision that it kind of was being touted as at the beginning, he said. But I definitely think its another tool in the toolkit of artists, so anytime we have any other kind of leverage I think that is going to shift [the] power dynamic in some way.

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From Silk Road to NFTs: Why Musician and Artist Tycho Sees Web3 as the Endgame - Decrypt

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Gizmodo is 20 years old! To celebrate the anniversary, were looking back at some of the most significant ways our lives have been thrown for a loop by our digital tools.

Like so many others after 9/11, I felt spiritually and existentially lost. Its hard to believe now, but I was a regular churchgoer at the time. Watching those planes smash into the World Trade Center woke me from my extended cerebral slumber and I havent set foot in a church since, aside from the occasional wedding or baptism.

I didnt realize it at the time, but that godawful day triggered an intrapersonal renaissance in which my passion for science and philosophy was resuscitated. My marriage didnt survive this mental reboot and return to form, but it did lead me to some very positive places, resulting in my adoption of secular Buddhism, meditation, and a decade-long stint with vegetarianism. It also led me to futurism, and in particular a brand of futurism known as transhumanism.

Transhumanism made a lot of sense to me, as it seemed to represent the logical next step in our evolution, albeit an evolution guided by humans and not Darwinian selection. As a cultural and intellectual movement, transhumanism seeks to improve the human condition by developing, promoting, and disseminating technologies that significantly augment our cognitive, physical, and psychological capabilities. When I first stumbled upon the movement, the technological enablers of transhumanism were starting to come into focus: genomics, cybernetics, artificial intelligence, and nanotechnology. These tools carried the potential to radically transform our species, leading to humans with augmented intelligence and memory, unlimited lifespans, and entirely new physical and cognitive capabilities. And as a nascent Buddhist, it meant a lot to me that transhumanism held the potential to alleviate a considerable amount of suffering through the elimination of disease, infirmary, mental disorders, and the ravages of aging.

The idea that humans would transition to a posthuman state seemed both inevitable and desirable, but, having an apparently functional brain, I immediately recognized the potential for tremendous harm. Wanting to avoid a Brave New World dystopia (perhaps vaingloriously), I decided to get directly involved in the transhumanist movement in hopes of steering it in the right direction. To that end, I launched my blog, Sentient Developments, joined the World Transhumanist Association (now Humanity+), co-founded the now-defunct Toronto Transhumanist Association, and served as the deputy editor of the transhumanist e-zine Betterhumans, also defunct. I also participated in the founding of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET), on which I continue to serve as chairman of the board.

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Indeed, it was also around this time in the early- to mid-2000s that I developed a passion for bioethics. This newfound fascination, along with my interest in futurist studies and outreach, gave rise to a dizzying number of opportunities. I gave talks at academic conferences, appeared regularly on radio and television, participated in public debates, and organized transhumanist-themed conferences, including TransVision 2004, which featured talks by Australian performance artist Stelarc, Canadian inventor and cyborg Steve Mann, and anti-aging expert Aubrey de Grey.

The transhumanist movement had permeated nearly every aspect of my life, and I thought of little else. It also introduced me to an intriguing (and at times problematic) cast of characters, many of whom remain my colleagues and friends. The movement gathered steady momentum into the late 2000s and early 2010s, acquiring many new supporters and a healthy dose of detractors. Transhumanist memes, such as mind uploading, genetically modified babies, human cloning, and radical life extension, flirted with the mainstream. At least for a while.

The term transhumanism popped into existence during the 20th century, but the idea has been around for a lot longer than that.

The quest for immortality has always been a part of our history, and it probably always will be. The Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh is the earliest written example, while the Fountain of Youththe literal Fountain of Youthwas the obsession of Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Len.

Notions that humans could somehow be modified or enhanced appeared during the European Enlightenment of the 18th century, with French philosopher Denis Diderot arguing that humans might someday redesign themselves into a multitude of types whose future and final organic structure its impossible to predict, as he wrote in DAlemberts Dream. Diderot also thought it possible to revive the dead and imbue animals and machines with intelligence. Another French philosopher, Marquis de Condorcet, thought along similar lines, contemplating utopian societies, human perfectibility, and life extension.

The Russian cosmists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries foreshadowed modern transhumanism, as they ruminated on space travel, physical rejuvenation, immortality, and the possibility of bringing the dead back to life, the latter being a portend to cryonicsa staple of modern transhumanist thinking. From the 1920s through to the 1950s, thinkers such as British biologist J. B. S. Haldane, Irish scientist J. D. Bernal, and British biologist Julian Huxley (who popularized the term transhumanism in a 1957 essay) were openly advocating for such things as artificial wombs, human clones, cybernetic implants, biological enhancements, and space exploration.

It wasnt until the 1990s, however, that a cohesive transhumanist movement emerged, a development largely brought about byyou guessed itthe internet.

As with many small subcultures, the internet allowed transhumanists around the world to start communicating on email lists, and then websites and blogs, James Hughes, a bioethicist, sociologist, and the executive director of the IEET, told me. Almost all transhumanist culture takes place online. The 1990s and early 2000s were also relatively prosperous, at least for the Western countries where transhumanism grew, so the techno-optimism of transhumanism seemed more plausible.

The internet most certainly gave rise to the vibrant transhumanist subculture, but the emergence of tantalizing, impactful scientific and technological concepts is what gave the movement its substance. Dolly the sheep, the worlds first cloned animal, was born in 1996, and in the following year Garry Kasparov became the first chess grandmaster to lose to a supercomputer. The Human Genome Project finally released a complete human genome sequence in 2003, in a project that took 13 years to complete. The internet itself gave birth to a host of futuristic concepts, including online virtual worlds and the prospect of uploading ones consciousness into a computer, but it also suggested a possible substrate for the Nospherea kind of global mind envisioned by the French Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

Key cheerleaders contributed to the proliferation of far-flung futurist-minded ideas. Eric Drexlers seminal book Engines of Creation (1986) demonstrated the startling potential for (and peril of) molecular nanotechnology, while the work of Hans Moravec and Kevin Warwick did the same for robotics and cybernetics, respectively. Futurist Ray Kurzweil, through his law of accelerating returns and fetishization of Moores Law, convinced many that a radical future was at hand; in his popular books, The Age of Spiritual Machines (1999) and The Singularity is Near (2005), Kurzweil predicted that human intelligence was on the cusp of merging with its technology. In his telling, this meant that we could expect a Technological Singularity (the emergence of greater-than-human artificial intelligence) by the mid-point of the 21st century (as an idea, the Singularityanother transhumanist staplehas been around since the 1960s and was formalized in a 1993 essay by futurist and sci-fi author Vernor Vinge). In 2006, an NSF-funded report, titled Managing Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno Innovations: Converging Technologies in Society, showed that the U.S. government was starting to pay attention to transhumanist ideas.

A vibrant grassroots transhumanist movement developed at the turn of the millennium. The Extropy Institute, founded by futurist Max More, and the World Transhumanist Association (WTA), along with its international charter groups, gave structure to what was, and still is, a wildly divergent set of ideas. A number of specialty groups with related interests also emerged, including: the Methuselah Foundation, the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (now the Machine Intelligence Research Institute), the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, the Foresight Institute, the Lifeboat Foundation, and many others. Interest in cryonics increased as well, with the Alcor Life Extension Foundation and the Cryonics Institute receiving more attention than usual.

Society and culture got cyberpunked in a hurry, which naturally led people to think increasingly about the future. And with the Apollo era firmly in the rear view mirror, the publics interest in space exploration waned. Bored of the space-centric 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars, we increasingly turned our attention to movies about AI, cybernetics, and supercomputers, including Blade Runner, Akira, and The Matrix, many of which had a distinctive dystopian tinge.

With the transhumanist movement in full flight, the howls of outrage became louderfrom critics within the conservative religious right through to those on the anti-technological left. Political scientist Francis Fukuyama declared transhumanism to be the worlds most dangerous idea, while bioethicist Leon Kass, a vocal critic of transhumanism, headed-up President George W. Bushs bioethics council, which explicitly addressed medical interventions meant to enhance human capabilities and appearance. The bioethical battle lines of the 21st century, it appeared, were being drawn before our eyes.

This TIME cover blew my mind when it came out on February 21, 2011.Image: Photo-illustration by Phillip Tolendo for TIME. Prop Styling by Donnie Myers.

It was a golden era for transhumanism. Within a seemingly impossible short time, our ideas went from obscurity to tickling the zeitgeist. The moment that really did it for me was seeing the cover of TIMEs February 21, 2011, issue, featuring the headline, 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal, and cover art depicting a brain-jacked human head.

By 2012, my own efforts in this area had landed me a job as a contributing editor for io9, which served to expand my interest in science, futurism, and philosophy even further. I presented a talk at Moogfest in 2014 and had some futurist side hustles, serving as the advisor for National Geographics 2017 documentary-drama series, Year Million. Transhumanist themes permeated much of my work back then, whether at io9 or later with Gizmodo, but less so with each passing year. These days I barely write about transhumanism, and my involvement in the movement barely registers. My focus has been on spaceflight and the ongoing commercialization of space, which continues to scratch my futurist itch.

What was once a piercing roar has retreated to barely discernible background noise. Or at least thats how it currently appears to me. For reasons that are both obvious and not obvious, explicit discussions of transhumanism and transhumanists have fallen by the wayside.

The reason we dont talk about transhumanism as much as we used to is that much of it has become a bit normalat least as far as the technology goes, as Anders Sandberg, a senior research fellow from the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, told me.

We live lives online using wearable devices (smartphones), aided by AI and intelligence augmentation, virtual reality is back again, gene therapy and RNA vaccines are a thing, massive satellite constellations are happening, drones are becoming important in warfare, trans[gender] rights are a big issue, and so on, he said, adding: We are living in a partially transhuman world. At the same time, however, the transhumanist idea to deliberately embrace the change and try to aim for such a future has not become mainstream, Sandberg said.

His point about transhumanism having a connection to trans-rights may come as a surprise, but the futurist linkage to LGBTQ+ issues goes far back, whether it be sci-fi novelist Octavia Butler envisioning queer families and greater gender fluidity or feminist Donna Haraway yearning to be a cyborg rather than a goddess. Transhumanists have long advocated for a broadening of sexual and gender diversity, along with the associated rights to bodily autonomy and the means to invoke that autonomy. In 2011, Martine Rothblatt, the billionaire transhumanist and transgender rights advocate, took it a step further when she said, we cannot be surprised that transhumanism arises from the groins of transgenderism, and that we must welcome this further transcendence of arbitrary biology.

Natasha Vita-More, executive director of Humanity+ and an active transhumanist since the early 1980s, says ideas that were foreign to non-transhumanists 20 years ago have been integrated into our regular vocabulary. These days, transhumanist-minded thinkers often reference concepts such as cryonics, mind uploading, and memory transfer, but without having to invoke transhumanism, she said.

Is it good that we dont reference transhumanism as much anymore? No, I dont think so, but I also think it is part of the growth and evolution of social understanding in that we dont need to focus on philosophy or movements over technological or scientific advances that are changing the world, Vita-More told me. Moreover, people today are far more knowledgeable about technology than they were 20 years ago and are more adept at considering the pros and cons of change rather than just the cons or potential bad effects, she added.

PJ Manney, futurist consultant and author of the transhumanist-themed sci-fi Phoenix Horizon trilogy, says all the positive and optimistic visions of future humanity are being tempered or outright dashed as we see humans taking new tools and doing what humans do: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Indeed, were a lot more cynical and wary of technology than we were 20 years ago, and for good reasons. The Cambridge Analytica data scandal, Edward Snowdens revelations about government spying, and the emergence of racist policing software were among an alarming batch of reproachable developments that demonstrated technologys potential to turn sour.

We dont talk about transhumanism that much any more because so much of it is in the culture already, Manney, who serves with me on the IEET board of directors, continued, but we exist in profound future shock and with cultural and social stresses all around us. Manney referenced the retrograde SCOTUS reversals and how U.S. states are removing human rights from acknowledged humans. She suggests that we secure human rights for humans before we consider our silicon simulacrums.

Nigel Cameron, an outspoken critic of transhumanism, said the futurist movement lost much of its appeal because the naive framing of the enormous changes and advances under discussion got less interesting as the distinct challenges of privacy, automation, and genetic manipulation (e.g. CRISPR) began to emerge. In the early 2000s, Cameron led a project on the ethics of emerging technologies at the Illinois Institute of Technology and is now a Senior Fellow at the University of Ottawas Institute on Science, Society and Policy.

Sandberg, a longstanding transhumanist organizer and scholar, said the War on Terror and other emerging conflicts of the 2000s caused people to turn to here-and-now geopolitics, while climate change, the rise of China, and the 2008 financial crisis led to the pessimism seen during the 2010s. Today we are having a serious problem with cynicism and pessimism paralyzing people from trying to fix and build things, Sandberg said. We need optimism!

Some of the transhumanist groups that emerged in the 1990s and 2000s still exist or evolved into new forms, and while a strong pro-transhumanist subculture remains, the larger public seems detached and largely disinterested. But thats not to say that these groups, or the transhumanist movement in general, didnt have an impact.

The various transhumanist movements led to many interesting conversations, including some bringing together conservatives and progressives into a common critique, said Cameron.

I think the movements had mainly an impact as intellectual salons where blue-sky discussions made people find important issues they later dug into professionally, said Sandberg. He pointed to Oxford University philosopher and transhumanist Nick Bostrom, who discovered the importance of existential risk for thinking about the long-term future, which resulted in an entirely new research direction. The Center for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge and the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford are the direct results of Bostroms work. Sandberg also cited artificial intelligence theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky, who refined thinking about AI that led to the AI safety community forming, and also the transhumanist cryptoanarchists who did the groundwork for the cryptocurrency world, he added. Indeed, Vitalik Buterin, a co-founder of Ethereum, subscribes to transhumanist thinking, and his father, Dmitry, used to attend our meetings at the Toronto Transhumanist Association.

According to Manney, various transhumanist-driven efforts inspired a vocabulary and creative impulse for many, including myself, to wrestle with the philosophical, technological and artistic implications that naturally arise. Sci-fi grapples with transhumanism now more than ever, whether people realize it or not, she said. Fair point. Shows like Humans, Orphan Black, Westworld, Black Mirror, and Upload are jam-packed with transhumanist themes and issues, though the term itself is rarelyif everuttered. That said, these shows are mostly dystopian in nature, which suggests transhumanism is mostly seen through gray-colored glasses. To be fair, super-uplifting portrayals of the future rarely work as Hollywood blockbusters or hit TV shows, but its worth pointing out that San Junipero is rated as among the best Black Mirror episodes for its positive portrayal of uploading as a means to escape death.

For the most part, however, transhuman-flavored technologies are understandably scary and relatively easy to cast in a negative light. Uncritical and starry-eyed transhumanists, of which there are many, werent of much help. Manney contends that transhumanism itself could use an upgrade. The lack of consideration for consequences and follow-on effects, as well as the narcissistic demands common to transhumanism, have always been the downfall of the movement, she told me. Be careful what you wish foryou may get it. Drone warfare, surveillance societies, deepfakes, and the potential for hackable bioprostheses and brain chips have made transhumanist ideas less interesting, according to Manney.

Like so many other marginal social movements, transhumanism has had an indirect influence by widening the Overton window [also known as the window of discourse] in policy and academic debates about human enhancement, Hughes explained. In the 2020s, transhumanism still has its critics, but it is better recognized as a legitimate intellectual position, providing some cover for more moderate bioliberals to argue for liberalized enhancement policies.

Transhumanist Anders Sandberg circa 1998. Photo: Anders Sandberg

Sandberg brought up a very good point: Nothing gets older faster than future visions. Indeed, many transhumanist ideas from the 1990s now look quaint, he said, pointing to wearable computers, smart drinks, imminent life extension, and all that internet utopianism. That said, Sandberg thinks the fundamental vision of transhumanism remains intact, saying the human condition can be questioned and changed, and we are getting better at it. These days, we talk more about CRISPR (a gene-editing tool that came into existence in 2012) than we do nanotechnology, but transhumanism naturally upgrades itself as new possibilities and arguments show up, he said.

Vita-More says the transhumanist vision is still desirable and probably even more so because it has started to make sense for many. Augmented humans are everywhere, she said, from implants, smart devices that we use daily, human integration with computational systems that we use daily, to the hope that one day we will be able to slow down memory loss and store or back-up our neurological function in case of memory loss or diseases of dementia and Alzheimers.

The observation that transhumanism has started to make sense for many is a good one. Take Neuralink, for example. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk based the startup on two very transhumanistic principlesthat interfaces between the brain and computers are possible and that artificial superintelligence is coming. Musk, in his typical fashion, claims a philanthropic motive for wanting to build neural interface devices, as he believes boosted brains will protect us from malign machine intelligence (I personally think hes wrong, but thats another story).

For Cameron, transhumanism looks as frightening as ever, and he honed in on a notion he refers to as the hollowing out of the human, the idea that all that matters in Homo sapiens can be uploaded as a paradigm for our desiderata. In the past, Cameron has argued that if machine intelligence is the model for human excellence and gets to enhance and take over, then we face a new feudalism, as control of finance and the power that goes with it will be at the core of technological human enhancement, and democracywill be dead in the water.

That being said, and despite these concerns, Manny believes theres still a need for a transhumanist movement, but one that addresses complexity and change for all humanity.

Likewise, Vita-More says a transhumanist movement is still needed because it serves to facilitate change and support choices based on personal needs that look beyond binary thinking, while also supporting diversity for good.

There is always a need for think tanks. While there are numerous futurist groups that contemplate the future, they are largely focused on energy, green energy, risks, and ethics, said Vita-More. Few of these groups are a reliable source of knowledge or information about the future of humanity other than a postmodernist stance, which is more focused on feminist studies, diversity, and cultural problems. Vita-More currently serves as the executive director of Humanity+.

Hughes says that transhumanists fell into a number of political, technological, and even religious camps when they tried to define what they actually wanted. The IEET describes its brand of transhumanism as technoprogressivisman attempt to define and promote a social democratic vision of an enhanced future, as Hughes defines it. As a concept, technoprogressivism provides a more tangible foundation for organizing than transhumanism, says Hughes, so I think we are well beyond the possibility of a transhumanist movement and will now see the growth of a family of transhumanist-inspired or influenced movements that have more specific identities, including Mormon and other religious transhumanists, libertarians and technoprogressives, and the ongoing longevist, AI, and brain-machine subcultures.

I do think we need public intellectuals to be more serious about connecting the dots, as technologies continue to converge and offer bane and blessing to the human condition, and as our response tends to be uncritically enthusiastic or perhaps unenthusiastic, said Cameron.

Sandberg says transhumanism is needed as a counterpoint to the pervasive pessimism and cynicism of our culture, and that to want to save the future you need to both think it is going to be awesome enough to be worth saving, and that we have power to do something constructive. To which he added: Transhumanism also adds diversitythe future does not have to be like the present.

As Manney aptly pointed out, it seems ludicrous to advocate for human enhancement at a time when abortion rights in the U.S. have been rescinded. The rise of anti-vaxxers during the covid-19 epidemic presents yet another complication, showing the extent to which the public willingly rejects a good thing. For me personally, the anti-vaxxer response to the pandemic was exceptionally discouraging, as I often reference vaccines to explain the transhumanist mindsetthat we already embrace interventions that enhance our limited genetic endowments.

Given the current landscape, its my own opinion that self-described transhumanists should advocate and agitate for full bodily, cognitive, and reproductive autonomy, while also championing the merits of scientific discourse. Until these rights are established, it seems a bit premature to laud the benefits of improved memories or radically extended lifespans, as sad as it is to have to admit that.

These contemporary social issues aside, the transhuman future wont wait for us to play catchup. These technologies will arrive, whether they emerge from university labs or corporate workshops. Many of these interventions will be of great benefit to humanity, but others could lead us down some seriously dark paths. Consequently, we must move the conversation forward.

Which reminds me of why I got involved in transhumanism in the first placemy desire to see the safe, sane, and accessible implementation of these transformative technologies. These goals remain worthwhile, regardless of any explicit mention of transhumanism. Thankfully, these conversations are happening, and we can thank the transhumanists for being the instigators, whether you subscribe to our ideas or not.

From the Gizmodo archives:

An Irreverent Guide to Transhumanism and The Singularity

U.S. Spy Agency Predicts a Very Transhuman Future by 2030

Most Americans Fear a Future of Designer Babies and Brain Chips

Transhumanist Tech Is a Boner Pill That Sets Up a Firewall Against Billy Joel

DARPAs New Biotech Division Wants to Create a Transhuman Future

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Whatever Happened to the Transhumanists? - Gizmodo

"And very, very stupid," she adds.

"I did not know what I was doing. So I cut a hole in my finger with a scalpel, which is silly. You're not supposed to use a scalpel; you're supposed to use a needle. The scalpel I used hurt incredibly; it was excruciatingly painful. And then I had to hold the wound open - which I did with a sterilized potato peeler - to insert the magnet. That should have been an absolute septic disaster, but for some reason, it turned out to be fine," says Anonym.

She started her journey with RFID sensors, considered a transdermal temperature sensor (which was a disaster), began experimenting with homebred sensors, and now has a temperature sensor, which she says is the latest addition to her body.

Anonym is trying to work on North Paw, an anklet made by the biohacking group Sensebridgethat gives wearers the ability to navigate their surroundings. The anklet holds eight cellphone vibrator motors around your ankle.

A control unit in the haptic compass senses magnetic north and turns on and off the motors. A few years ago, she detailed plans to have the first South Paw created and implanted in her left leg. "I had a prototype in my ankle for a while, but not anymore. And that had to come out because I was concerned about corrosion," says Anonym.

The biggest questions raised would revolve around ethics and safety measures when it comes to implanting devices oneself.

DIY biohacking falls in a grey zone. With grinders moving into unforeseen territories, regulators are yet to keep up the pace. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration had issued a warning that biohacking procedures involving gene-editing products for self-administration were illegal.

In the United Kingdom, there are no regulationsaround self-implanted microchips as they do not fall under the purview of medical devices, as per theMedicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.

However, Professor Tom Joyce, a biomedical engineer at Newcastle University, told Medical Device Networkthat biohacking raises questionsabout liability and responsibility in situations that go wrong.

For example, while a user might be held responsible for modifying an implant counter to the manufacturers instructions, the possibility of hacking the implant might be attributed to a security vulnerability for which the manufacturer might be liable, she says.

As for safety, researchers have notedthat modern body modifications can lead to complications that shouldn't be underestimated.

To Anonym, the ethics of biohacking lie in "a principle called bodily autonomy, wherein, in my opinion, everyone should have the right to alter their own body as they see fit, as long as that doesn't involve anyone else. And what I would find very unethical would be to alter anyone else's body, or to tell anyone else that you can or can't have this done," she says.

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A transhuman biohacker implanted over 50 chips and magnets in her body - Interesting Engineering

WISeKey Strengthens its Technology Portfolio Across Cybersecurity, IoT, NFT and the Metaverse by Constantly Learning and Adapting to Provide Customers with a Highly Trusted, Secure, and Intelligent Platform for Their Digital Transformation

Geneva, Switzerland August 4, 2022: WISeKey International Holding Ltd. (WISeKey) (NASDAQ: WKEY; SIX: WIHN), a leading global cybersecurity, IoT, and AI company, today announced its latest Cybersecurity IoT developments reinforcing the position of WISeKey as a major player on these strategic technologies.

The pace of change being experienced since the start of COVID-19 pandemic in almost every industry is unprecedented; this has led to the acceleration of digital transformations. Private, public entities and governments across the globe seeking to seize on the huge opportunities ahead, are also facing huge challenges presented by the merge of the IoT, AI, Cybersecurity, Trust, Identity Management and the Metaverse, thus they need a new platform model that transforms their operations, protects their data and customers while at the same time reduces complexity, accelerates service deployment, and increases security.

To satisfy clients needs WISeKey has embarked on a major digital transformation adding new verticals and activities that can be summarized as follows:

1.WISe.ART platform: WISe.ARTs unique competitive edge comes from its platform which is secured by WISeKeys various security technologies enabling the authentication of digital identity based NFTs, physical objects as well as digital assets, in a safe end-to-end process. The WISe.ART platform offers users full control of their WISeID NFT, while other NFTs must request access to identity information and WISeID NFTs users then can decide by themselves what level of information they wish to share. New artists joining the WISe.ART NFT Marketplace that increasingly see a future for the tokens that upends the economics of content creation and influence on the internet. Almost 100 artists have already joined the WISe.ART NFT Marketplace with approximately 500 products, adding a commercial NFT sales potential aggregate of $20 million worth of NFTs.

2.WISeSat solutions: WISeSat is the first cost-effective and secure IoT connectivity solution anywhere on Earth using picosatellites and low-power sensors. It aims to answer the needs of any large IoT deployment in agrotech, energy, logistics and more. WISeSat collects and sends data from terrestrial sensors, increasing knowledge of the status of assets and offering essential information to improve processes and optimize production. These interactions between sensors, gateways, ground stations and satellites require Trust. WISeSat, by using VaultIC, a complete cryptographic toolbox that makes straightforward the integration of digital security in any satellite device, offers this Trust. It ensures all Certificate-based Authentication (PKI), Authorization, Encryption, and Integrity requirements. The goal is to offer this service in a SaaS model allowing both remote and redundant IoT communications for companies seeking to securely connect their assets via satellite communication, covering large and unserved geographic areas such as maritime, deserts, mountains, etc., at affordable prices. WISeKey in cooperation with FOSSA Systems has launched in June 2022 , 7 new WISeSat FOSSA secured satellites creating one of the largest European IoT constellations in history. FOSSA has increased to 13 the WISeSat-ready constellation in orbit, becoming the Spanish satellite operator with the largest constellation.

3.Patents: The filing of patent application for a System and Method for Providing Persistent Authenticatable NFT with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), under the number US 17/514,296 ensures the provenance, authenticity, persistence, and long-term value of NFTs that are minted on Blockchains using this method. During the minting process, this method allows to ensure that the NFT is not corrupted, incomplete, or ambiguous. In general, there is a high confidence in the ability of a Blockchain to preserve and store the public key and digital signature information of the NFT along with any subsequent transaction data over long and very long periods of time. However, a Blockchain cannot preserve information that the NFT does not itself include. Such as disclosed in the patent application, it is the information in a persistent off-chain storage that establishes the value and that needs to be authenticated and secured.

4.NanoSealRT: The development of a new semiconductor theNanoSealRT, an NFC Forum Type 5 semiconductor chip that works with both Android and IOS 12 (and above) devices (the essential patent granted in March 2021 by the E.U. and the Chinese Patent Offices), further reinforced WISeKeys position as a major Smart Label system provider in traceability, anti-counterfeiting and consumer engagement applications.

5.Post-quantum NFC/ID card solutions: WISeKey and Synergy Quantum are currently developing post-quantum NFC/ID card solutions for second factor identification and post-quantum encryption chips and software platform for PQE tunnelling solutions.

Of note, in October 2021, Synergy Quantum SA signed a joint venture agreement with the I-Hub Quantum Technology Foundation, under the National Mission for Interdisciplinary Cyber Physical Systems, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India to provide its knowhow and skills for the productization and commercialization of co-developed technologies in the field of quantum sciences.

On December 15, 2021, Indias Union Cabinet approved the Semicon India Program (Program for Development of Semiconductors and Display Manufacturing Ecosystem in India), with an outlay of INR 760 billion (>US$10 billion) for the development of a sustainable semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem in India. According to the India Electronics and Semiconductor Association, semiconductor consumption in India was worth US$21 billion in 2019, growing at the rate of 15.1 percent.

6.Universal Communications Identifier (UCID): WISeKey has also made strong progress on using WISeID as a Universal Communications Identifier (UCID), a unique identifier for an IoT device on a network; the blockchain, a distributed ledger shared with the nodes of a computer network guarantees security and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), cryptographic assets on a blockchain cannot be replicated. The combined practical application of these technologies implementing UCID on the device, using NFTs, and putting them on the blockchain ensures that the device itself is authenticated on a network that cannot be corrupted.

7.NCCoE project: WISeKeysstrategy to further expand its U.S. operations will also benefit from the recentannouncement it has been selected as a collaborator by NIST for the NCCoE Trusted IoT Device Network-Layer Onboarding and Lifecycle Management Consortium project. Additional information on this consortium can be found at: http://www.nccoe.nist.gov/projects/trusted-iot-device-network-layer-onboarding-and-lifecycle-management. For this project, WISeKey is working with NIST to define recommended practices for performing trusted network-layer onboarding, which will aid in the implementation and use of trusted onboarding solutions for IoT devices at scale. The WISeKey contributions to the project will be Trust Services for credentials and secure semiconductors to keep the credentials secure. Specifically, WISeKey will offer INeS Certificate Management Service (CMS) for issuing credentials and VaultIC secure semiconductors to provide tamperproof key storage and cryptographic acceleration.

8.The Code to The Metaverse: This year The Code to The Metaverse, was officially introduced at Davos in May in a broader partnership with NBC, who will be producing a 12-part multi-media series to include broadcast, event and social media programming. Grounded in a human-centric foundation, The transHuman Code provides an ethical platform for developers, enablers and users of new technologies to prioritize keeping people at the center of gravity in the relationship between woman/man and machine. With its roots in the development of secure identity management, WISeKey has stood at the forefront of providing greater security for data authentication since 1999. In the future, The transHuman Code platform, secured by WISeKey, could seamlessly ensure that technological innovations protect humans in the all environments. Our co-existence with artificial intelligence will challenge all conventions of ethical norms as we have known them, as we continue to digitize our work environment, our social interaction, and our physical activities. Recent developments have forced governments around the world to take steps to quickly understand how Metaverse, this new frontier of innovation, is challenging the traditional conception of Sovereignty. With data being stored virtually on the Metaverse anywhere in the world and government employees and citizens using information technology systems that are hosted and operated from anywhere (even outside of their jurisdiction), the expected sovereign rights over that date on the Metaverse needs to be reconsidered. Many information technology companies are telling governments that that their versions of the Metaverse will be enough to ensure sovereignty over their data and citizens. Others are stating that new legislation is needed to protect citizens. All in all, the solutions they propose are partial and unsatisfactory.

9.Cybersecurity Tech Accord membership: WISeKey is a member of the Cybersecurity Tech Accord ( https://cybertechaccord.org/ ) is a public commitment among more than 150 global technology companies to protect, empower and improve security, stability and resilience of cyberspace. Since its inception, Cybersecurity Tech Accord signatories have supported initiatives on improving email and routing security, implemented Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) in their own operations, participated in global requests for comments on the UNs new High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation, and endorsed the Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace. Additionally, the coalition has coordinated with like-minded organizations such as the Global Cyber Alliance, Internet Society, and Global Forum on Cyber Expertise.

10.Clinton Global Initiate: WISeKey will be joining the Clinton Global Initiate in September 2022 to address Digital Identification issues as part of the United Nations SDG. WISeKey, in cooperation with the International Organization for Secure Transactions Foundation ( OISTE.org ), will be providing a Digital Identification Infrastructure-NETeID-designed to support a network of 20,000 Identification Authorities worldwide with the objective to issue a billion digital identities. Each of these 20,000 Identification Authorities operating from 189 countries will be authorized to issue Digital Identities locally. https://www.clintonfoundation.org/commitment/clinton-global-initiative/increasing-digital-connectivity-to-the-poor/?fbclid=IwAR2peIYHOEcL0ZvlG2ASGi0ElZ6PCaYymVid7gfsNPowqWGjeuzdc4l_fNg

About WISeKey

WISeKey (NASDAQ: WKEY; SIX Swiss Exchange: WIHN) is a leading global cybersecurity company currently deploying large-scale digital identity ecosystems for people and objects using Blockchain, AI, and IoT respecting the Human as the Fulcrum of the Internet. WISeKey microprocessors secure the pervasive computing shaping todays Internet of Everything. WISeKey IoT has an installed base of over 1.6 billion microchips in virtually all IoT sectors (connected cars, smart cities, drones, agricultural sensors, anti-counterfeiting, smart lighting, servers, computers, mobile phones, crypto tokens, etc.). WISeKey is uniquely positioned to be at the leading edge of IoT as our semiconductors produce a huge amount of Big Data that, when analyzed with Artificial Intelligence (AI), can help industrial applications predict the failure of their equipment before it happens.

Our technology is Trusted by the OISTE/WISeKeys Swiss-based cryptographic Root of Trust (RoT) provides secure authentication and identification, in both physical and virtual environments, for the Internet of Things, Blockchain, and Artificial Intelligence. The WISeKey RoT serves as a common trust anchor to ensure the integrity of online transactions among objects and between objects and people. For more information, visit http://www.wisekey.com.

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This communication expressly or implicitly contains certain forward-looking statements concerning WISeKey International Holding Ltd and its business. Such statements involve certain known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which could cause the actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements of WISeKey International Holding Ltd to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. WISeKey International Holding Ltd is providing this communication as of this date and does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements contained herein as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

This press release does not constitute an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any securities, and it does not constitute an offering prospectus within the meaning of article 652a or article 1156 of the Swiss Code of Obligations or a listing prospectus within the meaning of the listing rules of the SIX Swiss Exchange. Investors must rely on their own evaluation of WISeKey and its securities, including the merits and risks involved. Nothing contained herein is or shall be relied on as, a promise or representation as to the future performance of WISeKey.

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WISeKey Strengthens its Technology Portfolio Across Cybersecurity, IoT, NFT and the Metaverse ... - The Bakersfield Californian

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Performance artist Stelarc is world-renowned for using his body as a canvas for his art, which explores themes of the post and trans-human, from voluntary surgeries (yes, he still has his third ear, now a permanent part of his body, on his forearm), his flesh-hook suspensions and robotic attachments. But his latest work is a stand-alone installation that not only operates without the artist present, but is effectively controlled by anyone.

For the Science Gallery Melbournes new exhibition Swarm, Stelarc worked with Dr Paul Loh from the Melbourne School of Design and David Leggett from LLDS Architecture to create an enormous kinetic sculpture which senses and responds to the presence of humans. The project is also a collaboration with PhD students at the School of Computer Science and Information Systems, Pelican Studios and pneumatic and electric automation company Festo.

Swarm, which features 16 large-scale installations from around the world, explores ideas of collective behaviour, highlighting the way social behaviour underlies everything from molecular movements, the lives of insects, the algorithms in our hyper-connected digital world and how AI and new technologies replicate swarming behaviour.

Artist Stelarc with his work Anthropomorphic Machine at Science Gallery Melbourne.Credit:Chris Hopkins

Stelarcs eight-metre high Anthropomorphic Machine, which will sit in the Gallerys corner window on Swanston St, uses a system of cameras to detect visitors and reacts in real time to their gestures and movements. And while its a machine, it does so using the principles of human body structure.

Its a robot in the sense that its a machine thats interactive and responsive, says Stelarc, but its not your usual humanoid or insect-like robot.

He describes it as an alternative anatomical architecture. The work is anthropomorphic in the sense that its not figurative, but in the sense that it has skeletal tensegrity structure it has other muscles, steel tendons, a circulatory system of air, pneumatic lungs and a computational system.

A series of cameras are linked to the machine to detect the space beneath and around the structure, and whether a person is in proximity. Depending on whether the person is static or moving around, the machine will respond differently via a system of pneumatic rubber muscles that work with compressed air, which move all or some of 498 stainless-steel struts held together by cables.

Stelarc with his third ear which was implanted in his forearm in 2012.Credit:Helen Nezdropa

The whole structure is flexible and deformable, says Stelarc. As a muscle contracts in length, it pulls part of the structure it then deforms the tensegrity.

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The machines cameras track the dynamic behaviour of the crowd, the speed of interaction between people, and their distribution, using what Science Gallery Melbourne Director and Swarm curator Dr Ryan Jeffries calls a swarm algorithm.

I see also the structure itself becoming like a murmuration, says Jeffries, but also responding to groups of people, and thats at the heart of Swarm in terms of social, collective behaviour.

When still, the machine is beautiful, its rubber and steel parts appearing to float mid-air, but it becomes something eerie when its moving, as air hisses and the struts clank gently.

Stelarcs artwork is a machine that operates with a human-like bodily structure.Credit:Chris Hopkins

As the struts change their positioning orientation, it can be described as a kind of swarming, says Stelarc, where one strut affects another and the movement spreads across the structure. Its also about the notion of machine aliveness what constitutes a machine, what sort of vocabulary of movements generate a sense of aliveness.

Anthropomorphic Machine can also be controlled remotely; people can log on to a website and interact with the machine at any time which might be alarming for passersby.

If you go to a website, the camera switches on and your movements in front of the camera can make it respond remotely. Anyone, anywhere at any time can access the robot and animate it, explains Stelarc. Halfway through the night, when nobody is here, it is lit up, and[it] will start responding.

Stelarc, now 76, has long been interested in the idea of bodies being physically separated but electronically connected. Before most of us even knew what the internet was, he staged an interactive performance in the mid-90s called Fractal Flesh.

My body was in Luxembourg, and people in the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the media lab in Helsinki, and a conference in Amsterdam could access my body and remotely activate it via muscle stimulation, he says. There was no exoskeleton involved just 50 volts in different body sites which made my body move, done with a touchstone interface.

He performed a similar piece, ReWired/ReMixed, in Perth, where he lives, in 2016 at the Perth Institute for Contemporary Art, using an exoskeleton arm controlled remotely by strangers. Wearing a mask and headphones, he also decoupled his vision and hearing.

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For five days, six hours a day, I could only hear with ears that were in New York, I could only see with eyes in London and anyone, anywhere at any time could access my right arm and remotely animate it.

Wasnt that weird? Yes, he says. But most things I do are weird. A touch of understatement from the man who, with his partner and frequent collaborator Nina Sellars, created the work Blender, which used combined sterilised bodily material surgically extracted from the pair inside a sealed, air-powered machine.

That work was, he says the inverse of his 1993 work The Stomach Sculpture, in which he swallowed a small crab-like robotic sculpture which opened and closed, had a flashing light, and made a beeping sound, and was filmed through an endoscopic camera fed into his oesophagus.

With Blender, instead of a machine choreographing inside a soft human body, here a machine becomes the host for a liquid body composed of biomaterial from two artists bodies. There were proximity senses around the machine so when people approached, it triggered the blender blades to blend the material.

Anthropomorphic Machine, in comparison, seems almost conservative, despite its human-machine hybridity. Its a continuation, Stelarc says, of his works around machine bodiments and hybridities.

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Because of its skeletal structure, the pneumatic rubber muscles, the circulatory system of compressed air, the pneumatic lung, the vision and computational system, he says, if you werent referring to a machine, those descriptions might easily refer to a body.

Late-night CBD pedestrians have been warned.

Swarm is at Science Gallery Melbourne, August 13 - December 3. On August 20, Anthropomorphic Machine will perform with dancer Carol Brown and the Bolt Ensemble. melbourne.sciencegallery.com

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Artist Stelarcs creature comes to life at Science Gallery - The Age

Elon Musk's tweets are hilarious, market-moving, or lawsuit-enabling comments. Sometimes, they are also interesting and informative. On Wednesday, August 3, 2022, Musk made a statement about digital and biological computing.He said that the former is growing faster than the latter and we need to be tracking the data.

What is he talking about? I had to re-read the tweet twice to understand what he is talking about. After a little bit of research, I discovered another aspect of a futuristic society that we do indeed need to talk about. After a long time, Musk has actually tweeted something that makes sense.

Short answer: AI takeover and the need to merge humans and machines.

Off the bat, it is clear that Musk is talking about artificial intelligence and of course about a subject that is related to one of his companies - Neuralink.

To understand digital and biological computing ratios better, we need to know what Neuralink does.

Neuralink aims to put computer chips in human brains to allow us to complete tasks such as typing, pressing buttons, moving the cursor etc by just thinking about it. In pop culture, you can find references to such technology in Cyborgs - a human and machine hybrid.

So, how are digital and biological computing related? To understand this, let's answer a few questions:

What is digital computing? It is the collective brainpower of a computer, like your mobile phone or laptop or a self-driving car.

What is biological computing? There are two definitions to this. One refers to the collective brainpower of humans. The human brain is still the most sophisticated computer to exist.

Second, it also refers to organic technology that is used for certain medical purposes using human DNA or cells as data. DNA systems are one example of such a technology.

When Musk says that "the ratio of digital to biological compute is growing fast", he is referring to the belief that artificial intelligence is progressing at a faster rate than our natural human brains including the human and machine hybrid technology.

It is not the first time that Musk has spoken about this. He's been quite vocal about the fear that AI will become more powerful than humans in the future.

In 2019, when a Twitter user asked him whether Neuralink was the answer to giving humanity a defence against AI takeover, Musk answered by saying that there are two reasons - long-term and short-term.

He also spoke at length on the subject in 2017 during the launch of Tesla in the UAE. He explained that computers communicate at the speed of "a trillion bits per second", while humans communicate through typing via phones or laptops at 10 bits per second.

Using this explanation, he said that AI can one day become "smarter than the smartest human on earth", a dangerous situation for humanity. The Tesla and SpaceX founder claimed that humans would become slower and irrelevant in a future ruled by artificial intelligence.

An example of this would be human drivers losing their jobs with the advent of driverless cars in the near future.

What's the solution? According to Musk, the solution to avoid a Terminator-like fate of humans is to merge humans with digital intelligence; exactly what his company, Neuralink, wants to do.

There's a term for the theory of cyborgs too - it's called transhumanism. It was first coined in 1957 in an essay.

Do you think that we are progressing a lot slower than our AI counterparts?

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Elon Musk and a warning of dystopian future of AI: What is digital and biological computing? - DailyO