The Eleventh HOPE (2016): "Come into My (Biohacking) Lab and See What's on the Slab" (Download)
Sunday, July 24, 2016: 4:00 pm (Noether): It’s 1979 and bright young hackers are torturing their Commodore PETs and Apple IIs to make all the pagers beep on a university campus, or take control of a dam in Alberta. (Both are true stories - Tom was there.)
Fast forward to 2019 and their children (or grandchildren) are doing the same thing - driven by our universal desire to make technology “do things it’s not supposed to be able to do.” Except now, the role of personal computers is being played by CRISPR Cas9 gene editing gear that they bought for a few dollars on eBay. What can they do with it? Make animals glow in the dark? Destroy all life on this planet? Hold us hostage with bio-ransomware?
This talk will examine the fast moving science behind biohacking and how it will change our lives. It will also apply the “technocreep framework” to predict which aspects of biohacking will be considered cool and which will seem creepy, even to the freethinking folks who attend HOPE. As a bonus, you’ll learn what happens when you put sponges and electrodes on your head and run direct current through your brain.
Fast forward to 2019 and their children (or grandchildren) are doing the same thing - driven by our universal desire to make technology “do things it’s not supposed to be able to do.” Except now, the role of personal computers is being played by CRISPR Cas9 gene editing gear that they bought for a few dollars on eBay. What can they do with it? Make animals glow in the dark? Destroy all life on this planet? Hold us hostage with bio-ransomware?
This talk will examine the fast moving science behind biohacking and how it will change our lives. It will also apply the “technocreep framework” to predict which aspects of biohacking will be considered cool and which will seem creepy, even to the freethinking folks who attend HOPE. As a bonus, you’ll learn what happens when you put sponges and electrodes on your head and run direct current through your brain.
Tom Keenan