Kitabı oku: «Mensch. Maschine. Kommunikation.», sayfa 22

D Exkurs: Mensch. Maschine. Menschmaschine.
Chips, Devices, and Machines within Humans

Bodyhacking as Movement, Enhancement, and Adaptation

Oliver Bendel

Abstract

This contribution about bodyhacking as movement, enhancement, and adaptation has three purposes. First, it aims to clarify terms in this field or to draw attention to the fact that they are used differently. Second, it wants to shed light on and explore a phenomenon that has a history but is also making history at the moment. Third, it wants to bring possible fields of application into play which remain unexplored, or which lie in the future. Literature analysis and own considerations and conclusions are used. The article first defines and distinguishes “biohacking”, “bodyhacking”, “human enhancementHuman Enhancement”, “animal enhancement”, “cyborgCyborg”, and “transhumanism”Transhumanismus. It then addresses selected examples of bodyhacking. The author lists typical and known applications, ordered by their different objectives. He discusses actual and potential developments, for example as a response to potential crises and disasters (including pandemics) and in the context of satellites and foreign planets. On this basis, a brief philosophical discourse takes place leading to a summary and outlook. It turns out that bodyhacking brings opportunities with it, especially for the self-determined person, who takes his or her own body as a starting point and deals responsibly with the potentials. In this way, it can break with outdated conventions and create a new view of the body and its relationship with the environment. Moreover, it promises solutions to present and future problems. Of course, it also harbours moral and health risks.

1 Introduction

The intended, targeted transformationTransformation of nature and the body has been happening for thousands of years. Forests have been cleared and hills have been eroded or filled up, grains and livestock have been bred, human beings have changed externally and deviations or errors, if any, have been eliminated or concealed. The radical questioning of nature and one’s own body is a more recent phenomenon of the last two or three hundred years. This has put both squarely at the centre of attention and research. In an age of globalisation and digitalisation, new ideas and approaches are spreading particularly fast in the 21st century, and bio- and bodyhacking, the subjects of this article, are receiving more and more visibility.

This article first defines “biohacking”, “bodyhacking” and related terms. There are clear similarities between the concepts but there are also important distinctions, for example in a normative sense. Then selected examples of bodyhacking are discussed. The author not only looks at the recent past and the present, but also at the future, at possible crises and disasters (including pandemics) and within the context of satellites or foreign planets. This is followed by a philosophical discussion that takes up the examples mentioned and deals with their individual and social consequences. This all leads to a summary of and outlook for bio- and bodyhacking.

2 Bio- and Bodyhacking and Related Concepts

In this chapter the author explains the concepts of “biohacking” and “bodyhacking”, in addition to several terms that are close to them, namely “human enhancementHuman Enhancement”, “cyborgCyborg”, and “transhumanismTranshumanismus”. Animals as well as humans will be considered in the context of these concepts. This is by no means a matter of course but provides a wider picture of the application of these concepts. Thus, in addition to “human enhancementHuman Enhancement”, “animal enhancement” must be considered, and the other terms likewise unless they already relate to the whole area of life (like biohacking).

2.1 Bio- and Bodyhacking

“Biohacking” is a mixture of “bio” from the Greek word “bios” meaning life and “hacking”. Thus biohacking can be defined as the use of biological, chemical or technicalTechnik means to penetrate organisms or their components in order to change and improve them (see Bendel 2018b; Bendel 2020). The combination of organisms is also possible, culminating in the creation of real-life chimeras. Genetic engineering methods, among others, are important. Biohacking is a grassroots and do-it-yourself (DIY) movement (see Charisius et al. 2013), whereby scientific approaches are not excluded in principle. Laymen and sometimes experts (mostly without explicit mandate) experiment with life using mainly minimal resources and simple means. Ultimately, the aim is to create adapted or novel systems which offer added value and that can survive in their animate and inanimate environment, however it may be designed.

A subsection or related entity of biohacking is bodyhacking, in which one intervenes in the animal or human body with biological and chemical, but above all technicalTechnik means (computer chips, magnets, devices of all kinds, exoskeletons and prostheses), often with the purpose of animal or human enhancementHuman Enhancement and sometimes with a transhumanistTranshumanismus mentality (see Bendel 2018a; Huxley 1957; Bostrom 2014).1 There are hardly any doctors who explicitly assist the followers of bodyhacking.2 Instead, procedures usually come from piercing and tattoo studios. There are also events called implant parties, where people inform, operate on and inspect each other (see Schrank 2018).3 The specification in the context of biohacking is not always clear and depends on how the term “body” is defined and what counts as hacking. Bodyhacking is about creating new systems that assert themselves in their animate and inanimate environment and perceive or influence it differently (see Park 2019; Bendel 2018a; Bendel 2020). Networked bodies are referred to as the Internet of Bodies, which refers to a part of the Internet of Things (IoT) (see Bendel 2019; Matwyshyn 2019).

Bio- and bodyhacking are directed at the manipulation of organisms or their components. They allow experiments that are important for science, even if they are not carried out within its official framework (see Bendel 2018b). It is also important for the economy and society, if results – which may not initially be understood – eventually appear to be profitable, useful and popular (or if the opposite is true). Currently, biohacking can largely be considered an art form in the tradition of Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman and many others. It can be seen as a creative act of blending nature and culture, as an exercise of art involving the ego, and further as an act of optimal aestheticization, where body and head are decorated while natural features perceived as ugly are replaced with artificial ones perceived as beautiful. In many cases, biohacking (and especially bodyhacking) results in a plant, animal or human cyborgCyborg.

2.2 Human and Animal Enhancement

Human enhancementHuman Enhancement serves to expand the human capacity to act and to increase human performance, especially in terms of improving functions and optimising the human being (see Savulescu 2011; Eckhardt 2011; Ach/Lüttenberg 2013; Bendel 2015; Bendel 2014). The starting point and target are healthy or sick people who are supplied with active substances, aids or body parts and are connected with technologies of all kinds (see Heilinger et al. 2012). Thus, there is also a close relationship to bodyhacking, whereby the normative component – it is about improvement – cannot be ignored. However, what is an improvement for one party may be a deterioration for the other, and a deterioration for one party may lead directly to an improvement for the other. This issue will be taken up again in a moment. The mentioned methods and technologies are used with a certain emphasis. Thus, cosmetic surgery and the use of exoskeletons are without doubt human enhancementHuman Enhancement par excellence.

Animal enhancement is the extension of the animal, for the apparent or actual improvement of its own or human preferences and interests, for example for political, economic or scientific goals (see Bendel 2016a). Among other things, the focus is on improving performance, enhancing the quality of life and optimising utilisation. Here the problem mentioned above becomes obvious again: The improvement of the animal is often actually done to improve the situation of humans – the animal is thereby exploited. Insects are used as well as mammals, but the interest is different in each case. The former offer themselves as an alternative for mini robotsRoboter, the latter as suppliers of substances and materials of all kinds. As with human enhancementHuman Enhancement, the starting point are sick or healthy living beings. Again, there is a close relationship with bodyhacking, but in this case it is bodyhacking of the involuntary. “My body belongs to me” becomes “My body belongs to you” – which of course has a long tradition in the relationship between humans and animals.

2.3 CyborgsCyborg and Reversed Cyborgs

A cyborgCyborg is an organism – be it animal or human – that is technically supplemented or extended (see Bendel 2016b). Cybernetics – to which the prefix of the word refers – examines systems for automatic control and regulation mechanisms. It also and especially deals with machines. In the case of the cyborg, a technicalTechnik system is fitted into a biological structure so that two different systems are integrated and the biological one remains dominant (a cyborg is not a machine, it remains an organism). The non-dominant systems are often information technology tools which are researched and developed by computer science. A cyborgCyborg is a manifestation of bodyhacking and – if increased and improved – of human and animal enhancement (see Park 2019).

A reversed or inverted cyborgCyborg would be a technical structure into which a biological one is fitted, from collections of nerve and brain cells to a complete brain, resulting in a novel being – although this is still largely science fiction. In 2019, researchers at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, succeeded in keeping pig brains alive outside the body (see Vrselja 2019). Probably one day, like other brains, they can be integrated into robotic structures. This would create a form of inverted or reversed cyborg.

2.4 TranshumanismTranshumanismus

TranshumanismTranshumanismus is an intellectual and economic movement that believes the self-determined development of human beings is only possible with the help of scientific and technical means (see Bendel 2019). It thus sees itself in the tradition of humanism – which also vehemently criticizes it, lamenting the loss of the human and the primacy of the technicalTechnik – and the Enlightenment. One possibility is the conversion of humans to a cyborgCyborg or even a reversed cyborg.

Establishing technologies include brain-computer coupling and brain implants. Conceptual technologies include whole brain emulation (mind uploading), a vision of transhumanistsTranshumanismus like Ray Kurzweil (2013), as well as the exocortex, an artificial external information processing system. Some ideas of the transhumanists can be found in the field of science fiction.

Bodyhacking is also seen as a movement in this article, or rather that it at least has developed from a movement. It must be made clear that transhumanismTranshumanismus is another form of movement. It is ideologically and religiously coloured, whereas bodyhacking is more practical. Of course, there can be very different motives, but unlike transhumanism, there are no leaders and no or hardly any commercial interests.