Translator: Dragana Radmanovic Reviewer: Zuzana Šplhová
Did anyone here ever forget their keys?
Lose your wallets?
I did too, on more than one occasion.
And I hate it.
Now though, I carry it with me at all times -
most of it, at least.
Well, not carrying as actually holding it, but actually installed inside my hand.
The interesting part, though, isn't how I installed it,
rather the journey to this point.
It's kind of an unplanned journey
that didn't only change the game in the technology field
but started creating a global community.
A community where people using this
are evolving everyday convenience.
We can do easier travel.
We can do faster and safer payment.
We can do something as mundane as opening a door.
The opportunities are endless.
This is a very short story about how I ended up here,
and I want to give you a glimpse of the vision
on how to keep growing this community.
As a kid, I was always into everything sci-fi.
Technology, role-playing games, video games, you name it.
Being a fairly wild outdoors kid, I ended up with a lot of injuries.
A lot.
So, I often wished I had this kind of superpowers:
either indestructibility or self-healing, you name it.
It wasn't until I read an article about Kevin Warwick though.
He's got massive skills and knowledge
in AI, robotics, bioethics, you name it.
My childhood memory and childhood dream got rekindled.
So, I started looking into RFID
and this type of technology
that he uses to open his door to the laboratory, to his office.
And it didn't take long until we found, implantable technology that we could use.
So having my history in the piercing community,
I've performed some 30,000 piercings and body modifications.
Safety always comes first.
Having that safety has given a profound sense of security
for the community
since we always do things in the exact same way.
Anyway, this technology is like you saw.
It's everyday technology that you'd use with your phone.
You get on the train, you get on the bus,
you bleep at the cash register to pay for your stuff.
And all of that we can incorporate into this tiny microchip.
The big difference here is you're not going to drop it.
(Laughter)
So doing this research, I got to know that I could do it, on everyone.
I would do it on myself, anyway, for sure.
But I wasn't alone.
I had this one friend
that kind of had the same ideas and ideologies like I did.
So he was the lucky man to become superhuman
by my hand, for the first time.
And being super-excited about something, you really want to do it quick.
You want to change the world in an hour.
But we kind of forgot -
Well, I totally forgot to do a functionality test.
(Laughter)
Guess what?
It didn't work!
(Laughter)
However,
I had my Johnny Mnemonic moment.
(Phone beeps)
I felt like Johnny Mnemonic. It was amazing.
I programmed my implant with a call trigger
that as soon as I tap my phone to the chip, it would call my wife.
Now that's bonus points!
(Laughter)
That's when I realised
that this was what the world has been missing all along.
Or at least, I've been missing it.
Because we're filled up and packed with gadgets,
doodahs, wearables and nick-knacks,
but they just take you that far, don't they?
This was something else.
But basically,
it gave me the opportunity to open up this entirely new discipline
with my vast experience in body modification
and this childhood passion which merged and positioned itself
in between the high-tech world and the business world.
That's always been off-limits for me.
I mean, look at me.
(Laughter)
It doesn't look like I have a PhD or work at MIT
and produce implants for smart implant technology.
But with that,
having been brought up in the piercing community
and always wanting to share this -
if you do this in an open source community,
it will develop faster, it will become better,
it will become available for anyone
instead of getting it and keeping it to those MIT and PhD dudes.
With this community,
which has grown pretty rapidly over the last years,
we have managed to change logistics
in even some of the biggest companies in Sweden.
Swedish Railways are now allowing biohack implants as a ticket carrier.
That was in three months.
That's huge.
And that's the impact we can have on society changing
by just doing new stuff.
This, though, is biohacking. So what is this?
The word "hacking" -
Are you familiar with the news platform, Lifehacker?
It's an awesome platform.
There it is again. Hacking. Hacker.
You usually think about a hooded dude
hacking into your account, cyber criminals,
but when you take a gadget and use it for something else
and mix it with another thing
to make a completely different thing,
that's a hack, right?
That's what we're doing here,
hacking.
We're just stripping away the word "hacking"
from that Cyberdyne hacker.
As in every category,
you've got mainstream, and you've got the extreme.
These guys,
Tim Cannon and Shawn Sarver from Grindhouse Wetware
are pioneering design and implementation of larger implants.
They are grinders.
And these are just for funs and giggles.
They are LEDs that light up.
Five LEDs that light up if you put a magnet on them,
which is 80's disco ultra deluxe.
(Laughter)
However, imagine changing those lights into LEDs instead -
not LEDs, sorry, but sensors -
so you get five different sensors on there instead.
Turning that into an interpreter
for your body.
Neil Harbisson created his own sense.
He can't see color at all, so he created this
and this lets him hear color by vibration,
so he can walk out of the door and hear a symphony of colors.
That's also using biohacking.
And my personal hero, Elon Musk with the Neuralink Corp,
which will enable you to upload and download thoughts,
and probably in the future, connect us with supercomputers
protecting us from artificial intelligence.
So the list just gets longer.
When you go into the medical arena,
which we chose to stay parallel to because this is a jungle of bureaucracy -
you don't want to go there.
We chose to keep it simple,
so we want to make it really available for anyone.
Anyone who wants can use it, develop it, make it better and keep it growing.
Because if you don't keep it easy to get, amazing to have and easy to get rid off,
I think you are doing it wrong.
The potential for this is amazing.
I mean, five sensors are just making a seamless everyday interaction
with digital hyperconnected world,
I could stand here for days.
So, I am not stopping here, though,
because just teaching my body how to speak to machine just isn't enough.
I really want my body to be able to speak to me,
tell me what's up.
Hey, "Drink, buddy," "Get on the band," "You've got to go biking,"
"Stop smoking," whatever,
or warn me, like "If you keep doing this, it's going downhill."
So, together with a phone, which basically is a part of us already,
we've got a perfect match.
We've got everything we need.
Impossible dreams have come true since the pyramids, right?
and ours will, too.
But today, things are moving a lot faster.
And this is a digital renaissance
and this is art.
And I know you would rather do fun stuff playing PlayStation
or be out drinking beer in the sun rather than looking for keys.
Thank you very much.
(Cheers) (Applause)