Under the skin
Transhumanist, businessman and dreamer. The Swedish biohacker Hannes Sjöblad is an expert of implant technology . He created BioNyfiken, an association of bio-hackers based in Stockholm, and he considers that the future will be built on cyborgs.
Text : Eva Kerner et Mikaela Klein
You’ve worked in the diplomatic corps, in television, and in finance. How did you first get involved with biotechnology?
I believe life is about finding new challenges. I experienced this more than ever when I began studying at Singularity University in 2010, an institution on the forefront of technology. It does what traditional universities fail to do — explain what is happening right now, rather than re-hashing old economic models or dusting off decades-old history books. What was a huge eye-opener to me was learning about the democratization of biotechnology that is very cheap and easy to use.
The presence of a continuous tracking tool in our bodies will allow us to have a better understanding of our health, its functionalities and dysfunctionalities, going so far as allowing us to analyze infections, check the effects of our dietary habits, and modifying and treating them as we see fit.
This experience at Singularity University clearly opened your eyes. Was developing implant technology to help organize and make our everyday lives easier to manage your end-goal or are you still defining what that is?
Believe it or not, before working with biotech implants, I wore a suit and tie working in the City of London.
This clearly didn’t fit my counter-establishment nature, so I broke out of it. Now at BioNyfiken (Swedish Association of Biohackers), our main driver is curiosity. We haven’t defined a long-term goal, but are rather consistently exploring new paths of innovation, trying to incorporate new projects into our overall vision.
I foresee the next big step in biotechnology use in healthcare analysis (e.g. measuring temperature, pulse, blood sugar, blood pressure). This will allow people to better understand and interact with their own bodies, to see in real time the effects of drinking a bottle of Coca Cola or going for a run. This will also allow them to detect when something is wrong with their bodies (high cholesterol, low blood sugar, irregular heartbeat) and to take appropriate measures. This can generally make people healthier and live longer!
Where do you see this project going ultimately? Do you envision a world similar to Gattaca, one shared between machines and humans?
Much like we saw in the 1990s with computers and smartphones, this technology will go from something that existed only in science fiction, to be developed and used in laboratories by scientists and experts, to finally making its maiden voyage into the living rooms and palms of people all over the world. This technology will soon be used and manipulated by children and hackers.
It also helps that I am a huge sci-fi geek. Considering the ubiquity of technology in our daily lives, upgrading the body with this technology seems only a natural progression. In fact, we have nothing to fear of cyborgs, they are just the culmination of humanity and technology evolving together. They have been in our living rooms for decades, if not longer, now it’s a question of getting them off the big screen!
All this analysis seems to be based in some third party software, receiving the data from the implant and evaluating it, storing it on our phones. How does this differ from what we already have today in the wearables market?
While there are dozens of high-quality applications available to help people track their health data, 50% of people that purchase wearables stop wearing them after only six months. It seems that although they have a desire to keep track of their health, this technology only ends up being another hassle to deal with. You have to remember to charge your phone and your FitBit, let alone not forgetting to put it on when you leave the house! With implants, using the same algorithms, you can have a more accurate health tracking, considering you don’t take the chip out everyday to charge it and they track 24 hours of data.
While accurate data is important, having the freedom to take off the wearable remains paramount for users. How do implant developers address those concerns?
Wearables allow for greater privacy, considering users can put them on and off as they please, however many times a day, unfortunately that affects the data collected, the subsequent analysis, and the overall purpose of the wearable. With implants, the 24-hour tracking provides users with the accuracy they seek but also the freedom to remove it, albeit not as easily as say a watch or smartwear shirt.
If you want to take it off, much like with a splinter, the user can pull out a pair of tweezers and remove the chip, the size of a grain of rice with round corners, no bigger than 2mm. Here, you have the ability to get reliable, accurate 24h data, and if that doesn’t satisfy you, through a simple no-stitches procedure, pop it out.
Regarding the health risks of the implant itself, how safe is it to keep in our bodies over an indefinite period of time?
Implants have been used in animals on an industrial scale since the 1990s. We know how they work, how they interact with our bodies. The body doesn’t attack the chip because it is covered with Pyrex a hardened ceramic glass, that is ignored by the antibodies that would normally attack foreign cells.
Additionally, the implants don’t have biometric build up and don’t produce chemical leakage. The only possible health risk is that from an infection at the point of implantation or removal. This is why the chips that have been approved for implantation go through supplemental sterilization process to guarantee that it’s not contaminated. Another way to prevent infections is to always work with a professional piercer, one with experience in body modification.
Considering the amount of health data that can be transferred through this chip, does this technology and/or procedure count as medical procedure?
No. The technology is passive, serving only as an information transmitter. This and the simplicity of the implantation procedure allows for it to be much less regulated. Chip-holders have been known to take MRI scans still with their chips in their body. The only effect is a slight blurring on the image where the chip is located, due to a slight magnetic interference. Even so, the placement of the chip in the hand, where there are no major organs or lymph nodes doesn’t impede any medical tests or procedures from being carried out.
Is it possible to place the chip in different places, rather than just your hand?
I have mine between my forefinger and thumb, granting me access from front of the hand and the back. Some have been known to place it on the side of the hand, below their small finger. But the beauty of this technology is that it advocates total liberty — you can place it wherever you want, it’s just a question of convenience.
As a transhumanist, I am a strong proponent of morphologic freedom — that everyone has the right to do whatever they want with their bodies. No one else has the right to tell you what to do with your body, that that is your eminent domain.
If one day, the government or anyone else forces us to wear chips, I will be the first one on the barricades. But we do have to accept that humans and technology are merging. In 100 years, we will be a different species.
What are some of the additional services you envision that could make the chip more useful?
The future of implant technology remains in the variety of services the chips can offer, ranging from mobile payment, to hands-free access to secure buildings and transportation (both in private cars & public transportation) and personalized health tracking.
But as these services get more developed, rather than having one chip to accumulate all these commands and data, it would necessitate using several chips, implanted in different areas of your body. For instance, if you want to use one chip primarily to track your health, perhaps inserting it in your upper arm rather than your hand would be better, due to the better blood circulation there.
When I hear talk of more services and more data transmitted, I instantly imagine bigger chips, more complicated surgical procedures. Am I right in assuming that the stronger the chip, the bigger it is and the deeper the cut?
As of today, the technology is passive, with no internal battery, and unable to send signals out by themselves. The implant is activated when it is in proximity of a magnetic field of a particular frequency. When the technology will evolve, contrary to the cell phone, we won’t need bigger storage capacity or memory because all the data on the chip is stored on a 3rd party device, be that cloud or your smartphone. What we will need is a bigger antenna and a bigger power source.
Today, the chip is 1–2cm but in order to send & receive data, it will instead be 5–8cm, or about the size of a stamp. The obstacle is in developing a harmless power source or battery. Our phone and laptops run on lithium-ion batteries. However, if a nanobattery would malfunction in our bodies, the release of lithium would be detrimental to the human body. What we need in a power source is one that with a heat difference creates an energy effect, to harvest the heat.
The simpler the information you would like to have on your chip, the simpler the implantation procedure. The more complicated the services, the larger the antenna and battery, the wider the cut. The recovery time for your incision is a few weeks but the range of utility is exponentially larger.
You can find more stories on The Networker, the magazine of Reputation Squad.
