Hello!
I’m a French journalist and I’m doing an article on the latest innovation in biohacking.
What do you think are the latest interesting things that have been done in the field of biohacking? From what I see, nothing really “big” have been done lately. But I’m certainly wrong, that’s why I would like to get your point of view.
Thank you very much,
Morgane
Salut !
Plenty of things going on in the field of biohacking. Depends on what your expectations are, and which particular sub-category of biohacking you’re considering.
Let me bounce the question back to you: what would you consider big news in that field?
Thank you very much for your answer!
I’m thinking of grinding more specifically. And I would consider big news something like the eyeborg project or something that could really enhance the capacity of the body or the mind. Something like Neuralink maybe?
I’m not sure i’m very clear 
Thank you!
Oh yeah, you were over at biohack.me a little while ago. Sorry you didn’t get any responses. People who are actually working on projects don’t have the bandwidth to keep an eye out there.
2020 is definitely a “in the pipeline” type of year, so like no meetups are happening and supply chains are interrupted. If you ask here you’re going to get a lot of info about RFID implants specifically.
Well, here’s my take on it:
You mention Neuralink. This is indeed big news. But is it biohacking? It’s being developed in a Musk venture. Not exactly a garage endeavour. Don’t get me wrong: it’s very exciting, but my point is, it’s already squarely in the commercial sphere before it’s even a reality.
The keyword in biohacking is “hacking”. That’s you, me and other enthusiasts trying to develop bodily enhancements without much help from academia or the medical world.
As such, we hackers are limited to what we can do safely. A few individuals like Lepht Anonym are crazy enough to try things that are borderline reckless. For the rest of us, what we can do is pretty much limited to implanting all manners of RFID / NFC transponders, and lifting or sensing magnets - for now.
The biggest news in that space is that it’s getting more and more democratic. But it’s not breaking news, Musk-style: it’s something that’s slowly taking off, and it’s still mainly under the radar. That’s why I bounced the question back at you, because I didn’t think you saw it from that angle.
A few companies like DT or IAR are making it possible for your average Joe to get an implant and enjoy an augmented human being’s life safely and on the cheap. Shmucks like me get to live their real, actual lives without keys, without passwords, or get to pay for things without a physical credit card, without risking life or limb. That’s newsworthy, just not spectacularly so.
Also, you’ll find that people who get “ordinary” implants suddenly find themselves to be very creative with what interfaces with those implants. As a result, if you dig around on the internet, you’ll find a lot of open-source software and hardware designed for implantees. That too is rather low-key, but it’s taking off alright. You just don’t get to hear about it because it never makes the headlines.
There are a lot of augmented humans and a lot of solutions for augmented humans out there. Many more and much more than meet the eye. They never make the news but it’s a big thing: what ordinary people from all walks of life do today is a lot more than what Kevin Warwick did in the 90’s, that was splashed all over the news back then. Now augmenting oneself is almost mainstream. That’s rather transformative in my opinion.
Last big things: titan encased sensing magnets and first test units of the vivokey apex smartcard implant.
A real big thing was the flexNExT, people are implanting giant blinky chips. 
I totally get your point!
I actually work on 2 stories. One on how biohacking (not only grinding) is helping research. And another one that would be like a “list” of technologies that can “enhance” people. Unfortunately, the first one doesn’t seem to interest medias (I’m a freelance journalist). The second one does, and the magazine I’m working with is looking for more “mainstream” or spectacular things I think. Personally, I find the first story much more interesting and closer to reality.
Oh I totally forgot the biggest of all things: Payment implants.
There’s a payment implant for the USA now, a converted Purewrist.
And (soon?) there is a EU payment implant called Walletmor.
Oh and another thing, the Sentero.
Yep, that was me!
Yes, I figured you were in need ot sensational. In-depth pieces don’t sell as well
Well, that’s as much as I can contribute. Sorry…
What idiot would do that eh?
Yeeeah… not really. The Sentero is to biohacking what playing Flight Simulator is to being a pilot.
I knew you wouldn’t like me mentioning payment implants or the sentero.
Still, to me it very well fits the topic and is probably worth mentioning.
No idea. At all. 
I definitely think payment implants is one of the next newsworthy stories out of biohacking land, but because of the inhibitions of the EMV member companies it’s slow going at this point.
We’re still very much in the “hacking” phase of payment, converting existing contactless cards in a host of countries. The technology to pay with an implant acting like a payment wearable which will not expire in the same way a normal card does is all in place and ready to go. We’re literally waiting on MasterCard and Visa to just shoot the starting pistol.
It’s honestly just down to discrimination if you ask me. They’ve run out of technical excuses to stop us. If anyone is public about their converted payment implant then MasterCard can just deactivate it remotely and then your stuck with a bricked implant. If I thought it would do any good I would pursue interviews to bait them into shutting my implanted card off just to raise some publicity about how unfair their treatment of us is. It wouldn’t matter though, there’s more Mark of the Beast nutjobs afraid of payment implants than there are forward thinking biohackers willing to get them.
Without christianity we would be 1000 years in the future! Probably even more. I hate religion, I tolerate it, but I hate it.
I think this is one of the only ways. I remember a similar law suit about a bus ticket implant.
I also make sure to always say it’s a Mastercard implant when people ask.
I think we should just market it like Mastercard was on our side, so they get all the religious fanatics hate without actually helping us.
Payment implants are implants. Very much biohacking. I ain’t got no beef with that.
The Sentero is not a biohacking device. If it was, then a wristwatch would be a biohack to gain the sense of time - and while technically it is, nobody calls it anything but a friggin’ wristwatch.
The Sentero is a wearable. Clever, novel maybe. But it’s not biohacking.
A watch is no sense of time, a wristband that vibrates every x minutes is.
I’d say it totally is biohacking. While they have a utterly crap marketing guy, they still make a product I’d consider biohacking. It is admittedly sketchy af tho’, they try to be biohackers so hard it’s not even funny anymore.
It integrates over touch, you learn to sense and not feel it vibrate, much like a magnet implant.
I’m pretty sure we’ve had this discussion before ad-nauseam. Let’s just agree to disagree m’kay?
