Kind of OT, but you know what’s strange? I have these “implant gestures” I do every day - like throw my foot on the reader to open up my Windows session at work, or present my hands to various readers in various ways, always the same ways, day after day.
Yesterday I went to the swimming pool. When I came out, I tried to open the locker with my left hand, the way I always open my NFC locker at work. It took me a couple of seconds and a strange look from the guy next to me in the changing room to remember the key was attached to my ankle.
Them implants are implanting gestures in me that don’t happen in “real life” - not outside of the environment I created for myself anyway, oddly enough.
That’s very unfortunate about your inability to smell. I have to say, I highly doubt it has made you “less” though. The brain is an amazing organ. My mom has been functionally blind since birth, but she isn’t diminished as a human. All that processing she would have put into sight has been repurposed. Her other senses are extremely acute. I believe she’s also been pressured for her survival to be more empathetic and kind than she would otherwise be solely due to predisposition. Nothing was “lost”, only changed.
My partner is great in lots of areas, but she has crap spatial perception and direction finding. I made a little gizmo that she wears inside her waistband on her hip, which vibrates whenever she faces north. Our hope is that if she uses it regularly, her brain’s neuroplasticity will adapt to remember North in her day-to-day. It’s a bit too inconvenient to wear constantly as is, but I’m making a second revision with 24hrengineer called Cardinal, which should be small enough to wear as a necklace.
It’s been said before but for me, implants create a sense of freedom from the burden of management. Managing all the shit you have to carry around with you all day is bad enough, but managing tokens that literally act as proxy form your identity… or basically they act as you… but in a format whatever systems you’re interacting with can recognize as “you”… having to manage your multiple representatives… it’s infuriating to me.
Of all the things you manage, keys are the worst. They are bulky and irritating and usually carry the biggest impact if lost or stolen. For 15+ years I’ve rarely had to worry about managing keys. Being able to free myself from this burden of management has been metaphorical weight off my shoulders, and a literal pain removed from my ass… sitting on ones keys is no joke.
Some people think it’s silly to get an implant just to be able to get rid of keys… but it’s not silly to shed burdens in this life. One example I like to reference is the idea of Lasik treatment for your eyes. Why get Lasik if you can just wear glasses or contacts? Management. That’s why. Consider someone who has to wear glasses to actually see, not just sharpen what they’re looking at. Consider the impact of lost glasses on that person’s quality of life at that moment. Being able to treat your eyes with Lasik to remove not only the burden of managing your glasses or contacts, but also remove any of the consequences associated with loss of those glasses or contacts… the question in my mind becomes why wouldn’t you?
The glasses don’t bother me at all. I’ve worn them since I was so little that I don’t remember ever not wearing them. In fact, I never take them off, even when I sleep. So it’s not like I miss being able to live without them.
I could do with an autofocus augmentation though: I can’t stand reading glasses, having to carry them around, having to put them on and off. What a damn nuisance. But I’ll admit they’re convenient when I don’t feel like doing something involving itty bitty parts at work: I can say I’ve misplaced them.
Wish I would of lasiked years ago. I’m afraid I’ve aged out of elegiblity now.
Re: Keys.
I’ve found the easiest way to not manage them is to either leave shit unlocked or leave the keys in the locks.
Sometimes my shed is locked, but mostly not. House never is. Car and Truck both have keys in them 24/7. The only time I ever pull those keys, is when I’m carrying firearms. It’s one thing to have them stolen, but it deeply freaks me out that someone might take them and harm a kid. For that I could not forgive myself not locking them up tight.
Before y’all freak out, I live in a little town. This is fairly normal here. No way I’d try this in a major metropolitan area.
Also, my neighbors see everything. And… I pay a guy to mow my lawn. He’s a sherriff’s deputy, so there’s that too.
What about your workplace? Surely they have locks.
I leave my car and my shed unlocked (there’s nobody out here in the sticks really) but most of the locked doors I have to go through are at work: there’s a lot of expensive equipment there and it’s really quite secure. Hence the implants: I’d go spare if I had to carry the set of keys they gave me when I got hired.
Yeah, my boss is a lock freak. We keep personal tools inside a large conex box that gets locked. Inside a gated fence. The main office gets locked and his personal office inside that is locked if he leaves the room for more than a few minutes. So much effort.
Fun story:
About a year or two ago, said boss left early and was out of contact. The main boss showed up looking for some papers that were seriously needed right then. Turns out we could see them on his desk in the locked office.
This situation almost immediately morphed into a spare key scavenger hunt. Nobody could find them.
After about 10 minutes of watching this cluster grope go down, I calmly walked over to the door, put my back against one frame, my foot against the other, and expanded it just enough to let the latch pop free. Door open.
When the boss’s boss turned around and saw the open door, he demanded to know where the key was. (He was kinda upset about missing key at this point.) When I told him I opened it without it, he just paused, then said, "It wasn’t locked?) in a totally bewildered way. I said, “No, it was locked, I just opened it without the key.”
Dude kinda lost his shit. Made me promise not to tell anybody that I could do that, specifically not to tell the office owner. On his way out of the room, he pauses and asks, “Could you do that to any door here?” My reply; “Pretty much, yeah.” You could just see the light fade from his eyes as he thought the implications through.
I’ve done that with a car jack once. But if you can spread a frame just with your body, the building really must be made of chewing gum - or the locks really poorly fitted.
That seems impressive, but the article is 5 years old. Suppose it went anywhere?
Besides, with a name like Bionic Lens I was expecting it to be on the fly adjustable. The one cool thing about being near sighted is that I can see some tiny tiny stuff. Helps with electronics. Would be cool to have zoom eyeballs.
edit,
Website says 2-3 years in Canada / Europe, with US 2-3 years after that.
I wonder if that’s the medical version of the “2 weeks” from the movie Money Pit.
Regardless, I’d do it. Assuming it gets approved and all.
I definitely couldn’t agree more with the freedom from management burden, especially with the keys too. Back in late 2012 I once lost my main keys (I found them later that day) but that was enough for me, plus I was sick of using them anyway. So I spent the better part of my weekend project time in the summer of 2013 installing piece by piece the access control system for my house. I basically put a full blown system in just like you would find big buildings, hehe, but at the time I mounted a key fob on my watchband. It worked great, no more keys, and I never really took my watch off except for showering. Fast forward to now, I can take my watch off now if it’s bothering my skin (it does when it’s warm). Thanks to DT, I have a nice implant that allows me the freedom to walk through my doors as if they were unlocked. Not too mention now I’m converting all my computer logins over to implant based, plus the developments of Vivokey,
pressing forward with a future payment implant, ohhhh yyyyeeeaaahhhhh!
You have now sent me down a spiral of trying to figure out how I could build such a device. I would probably set it up on a scale of notes (like Neil and his colour = Notes theory) as I do have a keen sense of hearing (when 3 of your senses are lesser I guess you really do get better in the others)
I have found very little on the topic of electronic noses processing smells, (it has been done on very few topics with very little info about how one would go about doing it) as most of them are for detecting gasses, rotten food and detecting lung cancer. Yes, a device warning me of rotting food or gases would be nice, but I have gas detectors in the house and to be honest, I don’t eat anything that’s past the exploration date. This device would be fully for the act of being able to associate smells I can not preserve and assign them with sounds I can.
Seeing as I’m a high school dropout that really has no experience with building electronics I am stuck, but I will be continuing through all the long and dry medical and science articles I have found on the topic.
That’s not the point. I’m sure Neil Harbisson had labeled shirts before he decided to experience colors for himself.
Exactly. Kind of like, you know, those people who can’t wait to spend hexabucks on a tiny magnet to acquire a magnetic field-sensing sense There are plenty of detectors available to do that, but they want to experience it for themselves by repurposing a few of their finger’s touch sensors.
The first thing I thought when you posted you lacked the sense of smell was, what a great opportunity you have to try and discover something that we all take for granted!
Oh boy, by all means don’t let that stop you. There are plenty of high-school and college dropouts who went on to achieve great things. In fact, it may be to your advantage, as you haven’t been taught what can’t be done. If you’re truly interested in the subject, you’ll learn everything you need to get what you want far better and faster than anything any school can teach you.
I know, this was just to point out the fact I can’t use most pre-designed ideas on the concept of smell detectors as a springboard of how I could make mine.
This was more saying I don’t have the fundamentals on how to find what I’m looking for, when I don’t know how to look for it in the first place. I’ve done well for myself since high school, better than I would be if I stuck it through. but searching “smell sensor” can only bring up so many results of gas detectors till I will need to find more precise concepts on what I’m looking for in particular.
It should not be a problem, especially since the internet is available 24/7 to give you a wealth of information about anything and everything these days.
You seem like a pretty clever guy: I betcha it won’t take you long to acquire the fundamentals if you need them and you look for them. You’d be surprised how quick it goes from one dumb question on your search engine of choice to a great article that explains it all in simple English with clear illustrations and videos. That’s something very few teachers have managed to give me when I went through school.
Like many kids of my generation, I learned programming all by myself on a crappy homebrew computer, with a few ultra-technical manuals and - of course - no internet. It’s really strange how the learning went for me. Like for example, on the Apple II, I learned how to activate the buzzer (PEEK -16336 if you’re curious - I still know it by heart ) before I knew what PEEK did, what that negative value was, why it output something when PEEK is in fact a read command, what memory was, what a byte or a word was - or hell, what a buzzer was.
If I had learned all the concepts behind that command before using it, I would have spent hours trying to find what’s wrong with it. Instead, I just did it and it went pop. And then later when I taught myself about bases, processor busses and addressing, one day it all clicked into place and I went “Oooh Woz, you fucking genius!” This and many other weird learning paths has made me a better engineer - I think.
So I say go right ahead and dive into it. You’ll probably come up with something tons more clever than if you started from academic knowledge, and you’ll end up with a much firmer grasp of whatever you learned by yourself.
I know that look because I’ve caused it so many times
Various managers of a shitty job I used to work would lock theirs keys in the office by accident, and freak out that they wouldn’t be able to close, or they would have to call in the big boss
I’d roll up like,
“Soo I can probably get you in the office easy, but I don’t want to get in trouble for “haxoring teh loks” or some other stupid blame the guy helping you stuff
“Oh no… if you can get me in that would be great, nobody would yell at you, you’re doing us a huge favor etc…”
With him watching I walked into the break room next door, picking a monster can out of the recycling, cut the tops off, cut a nice sheet out, walked over to the door and shimmed that bad boy… 3 minutes maybe?
Manager was dumbfounded and ghost faced but super appreciative
I kid you not, not 12 FUCKING hours later they put a shim plate on the door
(Acted like I couldn’t be trusted lol)
Told that manager next time he locks himself out he’s on his own, and left him high and dry the next time and he got reamed for it
All while playing delightfully dumb,
“No since they put this plate on here there’s NOTHING I can do”
… I still got in like 3 different ways for other people
Haha but by then they knew that I would never help them again if they stabbed me in the back
Not too mention now I’m converting all my computer logins over to implant based, plus the developments of Vivokey,