The tech entrepreneur Elon Musk on Friday showed off a pig whose brain he says has been implanted with a small computer.

“We have a healthy and happy pig, initially shy but obviously high energy and, you know, kind of loving life, and she’s had the implant for two months,” Musk said of Gertrude, the pig.

The billionaire entrepreneur, whose other companies include Tesla and SpaceX, presented during a live-stream event to recruit employees for his neuroscience startup Neuralink. He described Gertrude’s coin-sized implant as “a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires”.

Musk co-founded Neuralink in 2016 with the goal of creating a wireless brain-machine interface, something scientists hope can help cure neurological conditions and allow people with paralysis to control a computer mouse.

In July 2019, Neuralink unveiled a design that involved implanting tiny electrode “threads” into the brain as well as another device behind the ear. The new device Musk described on Friday is much smaller, does not require the visible ear device, and would be implanted in the brain by a surgical robot under local anesthesia.

The device is removable, Musk said, and he showed off another pig, Dorothy, whom he claimed had had one of the devices implanted and subsequently removed. “What Dorothy illustrates is that you can put in the Neuralink, remove it, and be healthy, happy and indistinguishable from a normal pig.”

While most of the near-term practical applications of wireless brain-machine interfaces are medical, Musk has also expressed a desire that such devices could help human intelligence compete with artificial intelligence, which he considers an “existential threat”. At Friday’s event, the entrepreneur made a number of outsize claims about the potential capabilities of the technology, including that it could be used to summon a Tesla, play video games, or allow a person with a severed spinal cord to walk again.

Musk did not present any scientific data to support his claims about the pigs or the devices.

“…The all-new Axon Identity Management Platform (Face2Face 4.X)  provides Mobilised and Retail Customer Biometric Registration solutions that deliver mobility, compliance, speed and simplicity. Spend less time worrying about compliance and more time getting new customers.”

Read more - AxonWireless

Read more - https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/12/20800798/tesla-model-3-rfid-chip-keycard-amiedd-video-watch-body-hacking-body-modification

"The threads are 4 to 6 micrometers in width, which makes them considerably thinner than a human hair," reports The Verge. The other big advance that Neuralink unveiled is a machine that automatically embeds the threads into the brain. From the report:

In the future, scientists from Neuralink hope to use a laser beam to get through the skull, rather than drilling holes, they said in interviews with The New York Times. Early experiments will be done with neuroscientists at Stanford University, according to that report. The company aims for human trials as soon as the second quarter of next year, according to The New York Times. The system presented today, if it's functional, may be a substantial advance over older technology. BrainGate relied on the Utah Array, a series of stiff needles that allows for up to 128 electrode channels. Not only is that fewer channels than Neuralink is promising -- meaning less data from the brain is being picked up -- it's also stiffer than Neuralink's threads. That's a problem for long-term functionality: the brain shifts in the skull but the needles of the array don't, leading to damage. The thin polymers Neuralink is using may solve that problem.

However, Neuralink's technology is more difficult to implant than the Utah Array, precisely because it's so flexible. To combat that problem, the company has developed "a neurosurgical robot capable of inserting six threads (192 electrodes) per minute [automatically]," according to the white paper. In photos, it looks something like a cross between a microscope and a sewing machine. It also avoids blood vessels, which may lead to less of an inflammatory response in the brain, the paper says. Finally, the paper says that Neuralink has developed a custom chip that is better able to read, clean up, and amplify signals from the brain. Right now, it can only transmit data via a wired connection (it uses USB-C), but ultimately the goal is to create a system than can work wirelessly.

Currently, the company is testing the robot and threads on rats, but it's hoping to actually begin working with human test subjects as early as next year.

A device has now been developed by Michael Kahana, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, and the medical technology company Medtronic Plc, and successfully tested with funding from America's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa).

Connected to the left temporal cortex, it monitors the brain's electrical activity and forecasts whether a lasting memory will be created. "Just like meteorologists predict the weather by putting sensors in the environment that measure humidity and wind speed and temperature, we put sensors in the brain and measure electrical signals," Kahana says. If brain activity is suboptimal, the device provides a small zap, undetectable to the patient, to strengthen the signal and increase the chance of memory formation.

In two separate studies, researchers found the prototype consistently boosted memory 15 per cent to 18 per cent. The second group performing human testing, a team from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C., aided by colleagues at the University of Southern California, has a more finely tuned method. In a study published last year, their patients showed memory retention improvement of as much as 37 per cent. "We're looking at questions like, 'Where are my keys? Where did I park the car? Have I taken my pills?'â" says Robert Hampson, lead author of the 2018 study...

Both groups have tested their devices only on epileptic patients with electrodes already implanted in their brains to monitor seizures; each implant requires clunky external hardware that won't fit in somebody's skull. The next steps will be building smaller implants and getting approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to bring the devices to market... Justin Sanchez, who just stepped down as director of Darpa's biological technologies office, says veterans will be the first to use the prosthetics. "We have hundreds of thousands of military personnel with traumatic brain injuries," he says. The next group will likely be stroke and Alzheimer's patients.

Eventually, perhaps, the general public will have access—though there’s a serious obstacle to mass adoption. “I don’t think any of us are going to be signing up for voluntary brain surgery anytime soon,” Sanchez says. “Only when these technologies become less invasive, or noninvasive, will they become widespread.”

"Humanity will not wait millions of years for evolution to offer a better brain and body" (Patrick Kramer, Chief Cyborg Officer) #AvectrisDay #Biohacking @AVECTRIS_IT

“…Scientists in China are conducting a world-first clinical trial of deep brain stimulation (DBS) on drug addicts, in the hope that the technology will extinguish addiction, quite literally, with the flip of a switch.” - Read more at https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-08/china-trials-brain-implants-to-treat-drug-addiction/11090936?pfmredir=sm

A rhetoric comparison;

“…Uberveillance is a term used to describe intensive surveillance processes only developed in the 21st century. At its most basic level, uberveillance refers to the most comprehensive surveillance possible at a given moment in time. This involves the use of cutting-edge surveillance technology.” - Technopedia

Versus;

Uberveillance (say 'oohbuhvayluhns) noun. an omnipresent electronic surveillance facilitated by technology that makes it possible to embed surveillance devices in the human body. Also, überveillance 

M.G. Michael and K. Michael (2009). "Uberveillance: Definition" in ed. S. Butler, Fifth Edition of the Macquarie Dictionary (Australia's National Dictionary, Sydney University), p. 1094

Term conceived by Dr. MG Michael

“…The invention of new technologies is going to continue. We know this. But it’s also clear that the development of these technologies outpaces our capacity to regulate or legislate around this technology,” she said.- Read more at GovTech

Download the Bill

'“…The U.S. military’s top intelligence officer is increasingly worried about China’s research into “human performance enhancement,” including efforts to merge human and machine intelligence. It’s a “key area” of disruptive technology that will affect national security, Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA, told an audience at the Association of the U.S.Army’s annual conference this week.” - read more at Defence One

Read more - https://www.richardvanhooijdonk.com/en/keynote/the-future-of-cybercrime-and-terrorism/

“…Whilst brainjacking raises ethical concerns pertaining to privacy and physical or psychological harm, we claim that the possibility of brainjacking DBS raises particularly profound concerns about individual autonomy, since the possibility of hacking such devices raises the prospect of third parties exerting influence over the neural circuits underpinning the subject's cognitive, emotional and motivational states. “

Read more here - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30595661

Experiment setup. (a) Overview of the BBI system. In the brain control sessions, EEG signal was acquired and sent to the host computer where the motor intent was decoded. The decoding results were then transferred into control instructions and sent to the stimulator on the back of the rat cyborg with preset parameters. The rat cyborg would then respond to the instructions and finish the task. For the eight-arm maze, the width of each arm was 12 cm and the height of the edge was 5 cm. The rat cyborg was located in the end of either arm at the beginning of each run. And preset turning directions were informed vocally by another participant when a new trial started. (b) Flowchart of the proposed brain-to-brain interface.

Read more - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6361987/

Society has already accepted the use of physical implants that increase an individual's seductive power as well as technological implants that correct physical disabilities. Various companies are currently developing technological implants to increase the innate capacity of the human body (insideables) (e.g., memory implants). Public acceptance of this new technology has not yet been investigated in academic research, where studies have instead focused on the ethical and evolutionary implications of insideables. The main aim of this study is the development of a model, namely the Cognitive-Affective-Normative (CAN) model, for assessing the acceptance of new types of technological products. The CAN model combines the cognitive variables perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, as well as the normative variable subjective (or social) norm, from the TAM models with the affective variables positive emotions, negative emotions and anxiety. The CAN model was tested on a sample of 600 randomly selected individuals through structural equation modeling. Data were obtained from a self-administered, online survey. The proposed model explains 73.92% of the intention to use the technological product in the very early stages of its adoption, that is, its early acceptance. Affective and normative factors have the greatest influence on the acceptance of a new technology; within the affective dimension, positive emotions have the greatest impact. Any technology acceptance model should thus consider the emotions that the new technology produces, as well as the influence of the social norm. - Read more at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.12.063

Read more at https://doi.org/10.1016/S0969-4765(19)30030-X

The Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure (DPTI) is currently trialling the use of body worn cameras.

The cameras are being trialled by Compliance Officers, Investigators, Driver Standards Officers and Marine Safety Officers in their daily activities while monitoring compliance and standards with legislation administered by the Department.

Read more - DPTI

“…Body Worn Camera solutions for use in any public facing role.” - Read more

“…Chip maker Qualcomm is promoting a platform for smartphone-powered virtual and augmented reality headsets that rely on 5G networks, alongside partners like Acer, LG, and Sprint. The company announced its plans today at Mobile World Congress, saying it would help push phone-powered VR and AR (collectively, “XR”) headsets onto the market in 2019.” - https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18239108/qualcomm-5g-vr-ar-xr-viewer-headset-platform-mwc-2019

“…These Nreal Light glasses are able to offer a sharp and vivid image thanks to 1080p laser projectors (up to 60 fps) for each eye, all the while offering a 52-degree field of view which easily beats the Magic Leap One. And of course, you can still see the outside world while enjoying your digital content. The frame has dual microphones along the top for clearer reception, along with stereo speakers towards the end of both foldable arms (or you can switch to Bluetooth headphones), plus brightness buttons on one of the arms.” - https://www.engadget.com/2019/01/08/nreal-light-mixed-reality-glasses-sunglasses-hands-on/

“…Biohax have installed thousands of professionals world wide in the financial, healthcare, government, science, and technologysectors. Biohax have enabled their carriers to increase their security in the digital world, provide 100% identification clearance, and unlimited seamless experiences with their connected surroundings.” - BioHax

In early February, Google announced that its home security and alarm system Nest Secure would be getting an update. Users, the company said, could now enable its virtual-assistant technology, Google Assistant. The problem: Nest users didn't know a microphone existed on their security device to begin with. The existence of a microphone on the Nest Guard, which is the alarm, keypad, and motion-sensor component in the Nest Secure offering, was never disclosed in any of the product material for the device. On Tuesday, a Google spokesperson told Business Insider the company had made an "error." "The on-device microphone was never intended to be a secret and should have been listed in the tech specs," the spokesperson said. "That was an error on our part."