DIY brilliantly

In basements, garages, startup spaces, and university laboratories, DIY researchers, scientists, programmers, and neurologists are collaborating on brain interfaces that can control video games with human thoughts. They’re growing flesh that’s augmented with transistors and implanting Bluetooth sensors under their own living skin to send vital signs to mobile phones. They’re growing in-vitro edible steaks and leather without using living beings. They’re even helping severely disabled individuals speak using only their brainwaves. And most of them still consider this a hobby.

The grinders (DIY cybernetics enthusiasts) and their comrades in arms--biohackers working on improving human source code, quantified self enthusiasts who arm themselves with constant bodily data feeds, and independent DIY biotechnology enthusiasts--are moonlighting for now in basements, shared spaces, and makeshift labs. But they’re ultimately aiming to change the world. Think of how bionic legs like those belonging to Oscar Pistorius and cochlear implants that let the deaf hear have changed everyday life for so many people. Then multiply that by a million. A million people. And millions of dollars.

Not only has the new wave of do-it-yourself (DIY) cybernetics moved well beyond science fiction, it’s going to cause a business boom in the not-too-distant future.
West Coast biohackers and grinders were the pioneers of this tech-driven, California brand of utopianism. They’ve taken a big tent approach to their goal of hacking humanity: Paleo diets and meditation are just as likely to figure into things as cybernetic finger implants or controlling computer apps with brainwaves. For biohackers everywhere, augmentation of humanity itself--whether through technology or more traditional methods--is the primary goal. Common conversations points include DIY cyborgs, the quantified self and diet- and meditation- based improvement movements.
But a growing community on the East Coast--in greater New York, Boston, and Pittsburg--is synthesizing Silicon Valley's entrepreneurial DNA for it's unique innovation model. Experimentation and science here is not only an exercise in advancing humanity through tech but is often is applied toward creating viable cybernetic products for the market.
In New York City, biohackers are united by the extremely active Biohackers NYC Meetup group and several startups, incubators, and workspaces scattered across the outer boroughs.

Just a few hours up I-95 at Harvard University, researchers have created the world's first cyborg flesh. They have successfully created rat flesh that is seamlessly melded with a network of wires and transistors that monitor the individual behavior of each cell.  Harvard's groundbreaking research integrated electrically active scaffolds into rat cardiomyocytes, or heart muscle cells. Incredibly small wires and transistors were embedded in scaffolding made with collagen and wires; using the cybernetic tissue, researchers could keep track of the minute behavior of cells during drug reactions. Harvard's experiment is far more than just the weird science of creating cybernetic rats, though. In the future, projects built on this technology could be used to do away with animal or human testing for drugs, and to create cybernetic implants to repair damaged hearts.

Another project, the Heleed, is a cybernetic medical tracking device. Users implant the Bic lighter-sized device in their body, which then automatically sends biomedical information to the internet via a Bluetooth interface. The strictly experimental Heleed can also be programmed to display health warnings--sent to the recipient via an Android app--on the user's skin with LED lights.


One of the biggest boom areas for the DIY cybernetics community is controlling software and applications with brain waves. Crucially, it is the one technology for which we currently have robust development tools and a price point which allows hobbyists to easily experiment. Brain-computer interfaces are increasingly commonplace; in their most common commercial incarnation, users control computer software--most frequently games or simple applications--with brainwave-reading electrodes.

There is an undeniable science fiction factor to the idea of DIY cybernetics such as the robotic
exoskeleton for paraplegics. However, one important thing has to be remembered: Man and machine have been merging for a long time. Cochlear implants and bionic legs are just the latest in a long long of human augmentation that ranges from pacemakers to eyeglasses.
These technologies aren’t just for the future either; they’re being monetized and put to market on a mass scale today. Austrian firm g.tec released a product for patients with motor disabilities that lets them spell words using their brainwaves. Using the product, users who have severe difficulty communicating otherwise can attain a spelling rate of 5 to 10 letters per minute.

 20 or 30 years from now, we’ll likely look back on the biohacker and grinder communities like we currently look back on Silicon Valley, Stanford or Harvard when dedicated hobbyists and small business people built software and computers in garages and small offices and founded companies such as Apple and Google.