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All right, I think all y'all are starting to get tired of hearing me talk, so let me bring up the first speaker.

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So he is a co-founder and CIO of Grindhouse Wetware.

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He has been published in Wired and also featured on television's National Geographic's Taboo, as well as The Big Picture with Cal Penn.

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And his presentation will be Biohacking, the Moral Imperative to Build a Better You.

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Please welcome Tim Cannon.

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All right.

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Okay, everybody can hear me all right?

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Let's see here, get this plugged in.

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Oh, for God's sake.

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All right.

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So, as I said, my name is Tim Cannon, and I'm a co-founder of Grindhouse Wetware.

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We do basically low-cost implantable technology.

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We started doing this about five years ago, and this is something that I've had kind of a passion about for a long time.

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As a kid, I read a lot of...

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Science fiction, right, and particularly cyberpunk, and where it focuses on the merging of man and machine.

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And it sort of emphasizes this idea that technology isn't always going to solve all of the problems in the world,

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and that you have this kind of high-tech, low-life is kind of the concept.

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Now, I grew up reading this stuff, and I just thought it would be an amazing world if I grew up and this was available.

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Now, if you...

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Cut to, say, 2011, I started to read about people implanting magnets into their fingers

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and being able to feel the electromagnetic spectrum naturally.

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And to me, this was fascinating.

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The idea of being able to gain a new sense was something that I couldn't help but want to know about.

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And so, I heard about this in April, and by May, I had a magnet in my finger.

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And so, this was something that I just absolutely had to take.

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I had to take a deep dive into once I started to experience the things I was experiencing.

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I ran around and started to enjoy my new sensory perception.

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However, once the novelty wore off, I started to realize I could probably begin to build devices

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to talk to these magnets and these sorts of things.

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And so, as a result, we started to build things like...

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So, I took a sensor that took distance,

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and I wired it into...

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a microprocessor,

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and created a...

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something that created a sonar sense.

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So, it would ping me faster or slower

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based on whether things were closer or further away from the sensor.

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And using that, I was able to pick this device up

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and actually navigate around my lab

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with only my magnet as my sensory organ.

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I would close my eyes.

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I'd be blindfolded.

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I'd still be able to walk around.

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I'd be able to feel the walls coming in

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through this new sensory organ

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that I had implanted in myself.

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Now that's a picture of the magnet sticking to a little speaker that we had just to kind of illustrate that I have it implanted.

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So once I started to do that and found out how low the actual difficulty was in building these sorts of things,

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we kind of said, well, how far could we really take this on a hacker budget?

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It turns out you could take it pretty far as long as you're willing to accept certain types of caveats.

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So with about $1,500 and a group of people, we decided what we wanted to do was build a device that would be able to be wirelessly rechargeable.

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It would be able to take some piece of biological data.

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It would be able to kick that data out to the larger digital world and be able to receive data back into it.

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And so the Circadia was born.

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Now if anybody in here, I would hope in a biohacking village we don't have too many squeamish people,

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but just to prepare you.

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This slide, that was the device that I implanted in my arm.

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So yeah, I get that reaction a lot.

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Yeah, it's really large.

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However, we were able to do this with almost no budget.

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And we were able to make something that was safely implantable into the human body.

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And it would kick out my temperature once every five seconds over Bluetooth.

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And then basically, we had built a thermostat at my house so that when I got cold,

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my house would turn up and vice versa.

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However, usability is something that we should all be interested in.

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Because when you go out for a cigarette in the winter, your house just whoosh, you know what I mean?

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My girlfriend would get kind of pissed off.

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But we started to build these devices and realized that the potential for this was low.

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The potential for this was very high.

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And the barriers for entry were actually lower than you would assume.

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You know, I think that the barriers are more in our minds.

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Now, with the size of this device, of course, we got a large amount of criticism.

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But my argument tended to be there's already YouTube videos on how to make something smaller.

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There's already a whole engineering field on how to do this.

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What we don't know is how to do this safely on a hacker budget.

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And that was the real success of the project, at least in my opinion.

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So this is a picture of somebody who we built an LED implant.

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And basically, if you run a magnet over the implant, it would light the light for ten seconds.

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And this is me. I put it in my hand.

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Bird, who also works with me, and she's here. She's awesome.

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And then a guy named Russ Fox, who implanted it in his chest because he said it would be awesome to be like Iron Man.

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And I agree. I agree. It's pretty awesome.

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So, you know, we started to build these things and design these things.

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However, when I got my magnet, there was this great sense of, like, wow, I've got this new sense.

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And it's so interesting.

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But when I started to get exposed to all these different electromagnetic fields that I never knew existed before,

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I realized that I'm being bathed in these things constantly.

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However, I had no idea. Right?

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And so I was struck with this sense of blindness.

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I realized that the human body's limitations are so severe that we're constantly being exposed to things.

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There's a whole hidden world.

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And the brain is a pattern recognition device.

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And the truth is, the more data that you can throw into that pattern recognition device,

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the better patterns and the more clear and the more hidden features that you're going to find in the world around you.

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And that actually adds to our ability to see things.

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I think it would be very interesting if there was some sort of magnetic anomaly.

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And all of a sudden, it's in some, you know, bumblefuck, you know, Iowa. Right?

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And then all of a sudden, you're like, oh.

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And you have an entire tourism industry based on the fact that there's some weird magnetic anomaly

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that nobody would have ever been interested in.

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I think that these sorts of things are very fascinating.

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So, I think that one of the other things that really started to dawn on me

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as I started to investigate biohacking

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was that humans are an animal with predictable behaviors.

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And some of those behaviors

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maybe aren't as useful

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as they used to be

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when we look at it from the context of the modern world

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versus the context of the Ice Age.

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And I think that we have currently the philosophers are stuck

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in a sort of holding pattern

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where really the questions that they're asking are

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should we be doing this?

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Should we allow people to do this?

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Is it okay?

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But I'd like to take this from a very different perspective.

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I think that we have a moral imperative

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to change the human being.

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Given the fact that we are built so flawed

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and built for a time that we no longer live in.

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And I think society right now has a pretty pervasive belief

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that we kind of stopped evolving from the neck up.

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And that we don't have behaviors

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that are actually stuck inside the human being

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and ways in which we're in this sort of evolutionary lockstep

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with what we used to be and not what we are.

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And what we've become.

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And we're pre-biased to view things in certain ways.

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And there's all sorts of things that biology will do to us

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and change the way in which we're interpreting the world.

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And in that way I think we need to look at ourselves

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as an animal with predictable behaviors

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and try to figure out ways in which we can change those behaviors

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in order to be more in line with the desires that we have.

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I believe that what we would like to be

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is peaceful explorers

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who are trying to mitigate suffering in the world.

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And that's what I would like to see.

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But I don't think that we can do it in a monkey suit.

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I don't think that we can do it in something like this.

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And I think that the planet has a load-bearing capacity for life.

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And we are well beyond that load-bearing capacity.

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And we need to figure out how we can change ourselves

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in such a way that we can begin to come into harmony with that

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before we begin to propagate the rest of the galaxy.

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I mean, if you consider the fact that it takes 2,000 calories

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for the average American to sit on their ass

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and make snarky comments on the Internet,

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it becomes very clear that we're not very efficient.

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Right?

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And so, interestingly, we have all sorts of things.

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And so what I'd like to do is give an example.

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A while back they figured out, salesmen figured out,

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that you could give somebody a warm beverage,

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and if they're holding a warm beverage in their hand,

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they're more pliable to the tricks of various salesmen.

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Right?

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And there's plenty of evolutionary reasons you can think of

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that that would be something that would develop a trust bond.

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However, now it's being used to exploit us.

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And in that way, we have to think of ourselves as an animal.

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If you dangle a carrot in front of an animal,

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you can get it to do all kinds of stuff.

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Horses just do horse things until you harness them.

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And that sort of thing.

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And so there are ways in which we can be exploited

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based on evolutionary behaviors.

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And this should be concerning to people,

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because that's not how it feels.

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When your brain delivers you a behavior,

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it never delivers you a behavior and is like,

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yeah, this is totally normal.

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It just feels like the right thing to do.

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You don't feel like you're being exploited.

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And so blood sugar is another really great example of this.

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When your blood sugar dips low,

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you have a propensity to become more aggressive.

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So now let's picture a computer programmer,

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and he skipped lunch, and maybe he skipped breakfast.

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And he comes home, and at any given time,

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he might be absolutely happy to hear the jubilance of his kids,

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but today he yells at them.

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And he can't figure out why.

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And after his dinner, he's thinking,

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man, why the hell was I so pitiful?

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I missed off.

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Well, if you think about this in the context of the Ice Age,

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if your blood sugar goes low,

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you are about to have to choke something to death

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with your bare hands and then eat it raw.

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That requires a fair amount of aggression,

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more aggression than I really want to ever have to summon.

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And I don't think that we understand

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that in terms of self-control,

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we tacitly accept all sorts of different talents that people have,

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mathematical talents,

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and athletic talents.

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However, we don't tend to believe that there's such a thing as,

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say, moral talent or the talent for self-control,

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these sorts of things.

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And I think that when I look at the world,

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people tend to be tortured by their weaknesses,

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mostly because they don't understand where they come from.

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They don't understand that the brain is seated in those weaknesses.

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And I think we tend to think that evolution wanted us

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to become smarter and smarter and smarter.

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But the truth is, intelligence is not good for biological life.

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It's actually not nearly as helpful as we tend to give it credit for.

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And self-control, additionally, is not good for biological life.

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In the Ice Age, if you were the type of person that would skip a meal,

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you were not going to last very long.

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And nature was the thing that delimited us.

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Nature was the thing that allowed us to say,

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OK, well, you just eat as much as you can,

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have sex as much as you can,

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and we'll handle it with war and famine and disease,

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and this sort of thing.

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And so, self-control is not good for biological life.

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And we look at the anomalous people in the world

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who happen to have self-control,

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and then we tend to apply that back to the average human being,

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and then we say, gosh, I wonder why we just can't get our shit together.

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Well, it's because we take the anomalies and we say,

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anybody can do this.

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But that's not the case.

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That's not the case.

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And if you've ever known a drug addict in your life,

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you know that these people don't want to do the things that they do.

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Now, I'll make a small admission,

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is that I'm a recovering alcoholic.

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And I can remember looking in the mirror and saying,

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please, man, just don't drink today.

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Just today.

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And I had come 2 a.m., I spent the rent,

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I don't know how I got there.

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And for a year after I got sober,

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I puzzled over this.

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Why?

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Why could I not stop?

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And this nagging feeling in my brain,

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and this sort of thing.

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And I can remember, finally the analogy came to me.

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It's like holding two heavy buckets of water out

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in front of you all the time.

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And then you decide to go have a drink.

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You haven't even had a drink yet.

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You decide to go have a drink.

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And it's like letting them buckets down.

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Feels so good.

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And so, basically,

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biology is based on struggle.

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And as a result of that,

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it focuses on robustness.

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In other words,

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if we lost all of modernity tomorrow,

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and we lost all of our knowledge,

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we would go on.

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Because we know we want to have sex,

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and we know we want to eat,

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and we know we don't want to share with people

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who don't look like us.

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And that's exactly how you end up going forward,

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in a case where you don't have modernity,

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and where you don't have these sorts of things.

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But if we had some sort of exponentially

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compounding advantage over other creatures,

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for a while, we wouldn't be able to notice it.

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For a while, it would take some time.

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We would still feel subject to famine,

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and death, and war, and these sorts of things.

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And the thing is,

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that's exactly what technology is.

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Technology is this exponentially compounding thing.

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However, we haven't put ourselves in a context

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of something that needs repaired.

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And so now, we're so far out of lockstep with nature,

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that we can't stop ourselves.

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We are monkeys with high-tech

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digital fiber optic cable and laser guns.

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It's not safe to be that.

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I would never teach a monkey to use a rifle.

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But I've got a whole room full of monkeys who know rifles.

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It's not good, right?

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And so, focusing on robustness

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is biology's job,

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which is why we need to divorce ourselves from biology.

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We need to transcend biology, in my opinion.

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Because how are we going to expect to get world peace

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if we're all one skipped meal

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away from punching each other in the face?

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Right?

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How can we have racial harmony

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when every single person in this room

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would fail the Stanford implicit racial bias test?

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Racism is a strategy.

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It's a behavioral strategy.

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If you're on the African savannah,

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what's the best way to determine

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who you should share your resources with?

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Do they look different than me?

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Then they don't get to share.

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This is something that should concern everyone in this room

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because we're designed this way.

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Evolution did this to us.

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We can't just judge humanity on the good things.

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We need to stop pretending that we are perfect

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and that we are at the pinnacle of evolution.

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We need to look at ourselves in the context

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of what we really are.

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Now, nature is completely indifferent to our success.

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Nature will be here when we're gone

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and that's absolutely fine.

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And at the end of the day,

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George Carlin has this great quote that says,

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The earth doesn't give a fuck about plastic.

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The earth will strike a new balance.

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The earth with plastic.

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It's the people who live on the earth

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that might have a bit of a problem.

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Now, I'm sure you guys know Bill Nye.

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He has a...

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quote where he says if you're in a car

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in terms of like our progress

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and saving the planet and this sort of thing.

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He says if you're in a car

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and you're careening towards a cliff

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you should pump the brakes.

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And I agree with that.

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However,

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I prefer to think of it this way.

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If you're in a plane and you're careening towards a cliff

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there's going to be a point where you've passed

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the ability to hit the brakes.

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However, if you accelerate

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you might actually be able to take flight.

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So I don't know where we are in that process.

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But I do know that my preference is to fly.

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And that's it. Thank you.