Biohacking
Biohacking: definition, explanation, tips & scheme
What is the definition of biohacking? Well, this falls under biohacking (8x): from body- & mindhacking for optimal life and self-improvement to technological developments, such as immortality, including a model with all parts of biohacking, three videos about biohacking and two presentations.
Biohacking is a personal and technological development that will have a major impact on our lives and our society. What is the definition of biohacking? What are interesting developments? What does that mean?
Biohacking definition
What’s biohacking? According to some, biohacking is about dealing with biology whilst having the attitude of a hacker. The term has not yet been sharply defined. These are different definitions:
- It denotes your body’s symbiosis with technology.
- Optimizing your body through the use of biology and technology.
- Influencing your environment to function optimally.
Biohacking denotes messing with your body.
Biohacking therefore covers a relatively broad spectrum. From people who drink buttercoffee, people who implant chips in their bodies, to people who analyse their DNA themselves at home. Supporters of biohacking associate themselves with biopunk, transhumanism or techno-progressivism. Another trend in biohacking concerns the aim to perform better, both in their work or business, as well as the improvement of physical performance.
This, according to me, the essence: biohacking is about optimizing your life and body by means of technology, biology, systems thinking and personal experiments. As you will read further on, this is still a quite broad description.
Omnisensor
A number of companies are already trying to develop chips that can measure various things within our bodies. For many technicians, working on this kind of projects is a dream (3). Most customers are not waiting for this. In fact, they only find it scary (-3). The regular care parties to which the meditech companies deliver are not enthusiastic either. If these chips work well, it could result in a loss of a large part of their work (-1).
People Improvement
The term biohacking is closely related to the term human improvement. This is best reflected by a quote in the report ‘Good, better, disputed’ by the Rathenau Institute. “The human body has become a quantifiable object, a collection of zeros and ones that you can measure, read, manipulate, monitor, pimp and improve and on which you can intervene, cut back, steer and control”.
For me, this definition is one the most complete and striking ones out there. For this reason I always prefer using this definition in lectures and presentations on biohacking.
What is biohacking?
Biohacking covers numerous things (see the model below). It is about improving your cognitive and physical performance, quantified self (self-measurement), DIY Grinding (implanting chips in your body), 3D bio-printing, DNA hacking, longer life, as well other things such as singularity and ultimately transhumanism.
I personally find that rather interesting. How can I improve my body and life? Which technological and non-technological tools do have at my disposal? What impact does that have on my life and the rest of society as a whole?
For me, biohacking can be subcatogorized in three entities: Self Tracking, Human Performance Improvement and Human Enhancement. These sections include various themes. The model below shows the relationship between the components and themes.
Model biohacking
Self tracking
Under Self Tracking falls quantified self and lifelogging/streaming.
Quantified self: measuring, monitoring and analyzing various parts of your life. Think of activity-trackers that measure whether you exercise enough during the day, apps that allow you to log your food and drink or sensors that measure how well you sleep.
Lifelogging and streaming: recording all kinds of aspects of your life (logging) and the continuous and/or real time sharing of parts of your life (streaming).
Read all about quantified self and a specific part of self tracking: genetics.
Human performance Improvement
Under Human Performance Improvement fall body, mind en consciousness hacking.
Body hacking: ways to improve your body, health and/or physical performance. This includes exercise and training, as well as lifestyle and nutrition.
Mind hacking: ways to improve your cognitive performance. This also includes techniques and strategies to think faster, become more creative or train your memory. Related to Mind Hacking is Consciousness Hacking: technology designed for spiritual growth.
On my personal blog Project Life I have described the most appealing and controversial experiments, hacks and gadgets in the field of Human Performance Improvement: personal experiments.
Human Enhancement
Human Enhancement comprises of three components, namely Human Augmentation, Biotechnology and Transhumanism.
Human Augmentation: this term is very similar to Human Enhancement, but the difference is that Augmentation stands for adding elements to the body. An example of this is electronics. As such, I had an NFC chip implanted in my left hand.
The last example stands for DIY Grinding. DIY Grinding is the modification of the body using technology. Together with Neurotechnology this is a sub-component under Human Augmentation. Neurotechnology is the research into and intervention in the human brain.
Biotechnology.
Biotechnology deals with the techniques in order to use biology for practical purposes. Since this is a very wide area, I have divided it into two sub-components, namely Genetic Modification and Epigenetics.
Genetic Modification is the modification of DNA and RNA in living organisms and epigenetics is related to this. Epigenetics denotes the study of the effect of genes on the development of an organism. Other developments such as 3D bioprinting, DIY biology, synthetic biology, stem cells and the cultivation of meat in a laboratory I described in my article on biotechnology.
Transhumanism
Transhumanism is a philosophical movement that tries to break through the boundaries set by nature on human existence. These are the boundaries in all kinds of forms, such as skills and age, but also the form in which mankind lives.
Transhumanism includes the sub-components Immortality and Superhuman. Immortality denotes visions with which technology and scientific breakthroughs would enable humans to age significantly, and to perhaps even reach immortality.
The Superman is a development in which people will soon not only be able to age a lot, but also to have more capacities and abilities (among other things because of the other parts I have described such as genetic modification and neurotechnology).
Supporting technologies
Some technological developments under my model do not fall under biohacking, but are supportive and accelerating for themes that fall under biohacking. These include artificial intelligence, nanotechnology and materials-science.
The term singularity denotes the fusion and acceleration of technologies. It also indicates the moment when artificial intelligence is smarter than human intelligence.
This then entails such an acceleration that we cannot understand it with our current human intelligence. This new form of intelligence and a combination of exponential technology means that all the individual components of biohacking can be accelerated.
Impact
Why is it necessary to delve into the developments covered by biohacking?
The reason is that many renewals and innovations arise at the edges of systems, and often come into being through pioneering work by freaks, weirdo’s, nerds, hackers and outsiders. Soon it will not be the computer hackers but the biohackers who have a big impact on the world and our future.
For that reason I have written numerous articles on the impact of biohacking, such as technology ethics and the influence of technology.
Personal experiments
Self-improvement is the motivation of many people who see biohacking as a method to get the most out of their lives and to perform optimally. As you have read in the earlier paragraph on Human Performance Improvement, this can be for all kinds of different purposes. From more focus and concentration, to running faster and getting stronger and from more relaxation to spiritual growth.
In some cases this goes wrong. For example, in May 2018 I was a guest in the Radio 1 programme ‘Met het Oog op Morgen’ with Wilfried de Jong (you can find the video below). The cause was the tragic death of American Aaron Traywick, one of the most prominent figures in this scene. With his company Ascendance, he wanted to make medicines and medical applications available to everyone. According to him, the process by which these methods are tested in laboratories takes far too long.
He put his money where his mouth was by regularly testing things out for himself. In May 2018, an experiment killed him. He was found dead in a floating tank with an overdose of ketamine (a hard drug).
Tristan Roberts
A partner of Aaron Traywick’s is Tristan Roberts. He decided to inject himself with genetically modified plasmid in order for his body to produce N6 antibodies against the HIV virus.
In November 2018, I interviewed Tristan about his experiment, the impact on healthcare, the pharmaceutical industry, the dangers and ethical dilemmas.
Currents
Traditionally, the term biohacking has a different meaning. In 1988 the title was used for the first time in an article in the Washington Post on the possibilities of doing biotechnological experiments at home. This is somewhat in line with personal experiments, except that at the time it was not necessarily intended to try biotechnology on your own.
At the Waag Society in Amsterdam the term biohacking is still used as stated by the Washington Post. I invited Roland van Dierendonck van de Waag for a meet-up on the subject of DIY biology. In an interview with the Algemeen Dagblad, for which I myself also have been interviewed, he indicates that the term has acquired two meanings in recent years: ‘For me, biohacking is about civic science and doing research on my own, but the term is increasingly used for self-improvement. That is just a very different culture.”
In short, to make it clear: biohackers want to improve themselves in the broadest sense of the word: in terms of health, cognition and physical performance. To do so, they use products and services marketed by companies under the name of biohacking, they also apply radical methods (such as implanting electronics in their bodies) or try out recent scientific insights on their own.
Do-it-yourself biology
I myself consider the activities of the Weighhouse to be DIY biology. This means that biological research is not just reserved for large companies or scientific institutions, but that others can also start to investigate and intervene in biology themselves.
In the Biohack Academy of the Waag, for example, you can work on algae processing, cultivating bacteria and analysing your DNA yourself. You can also make your own laboratory equipment. De Waag is also committed to stimulating the social debate on biotechnology. They do this by organizing lectures and workshops.