I have a neodymium finger implant and a NFC implant in each hand. Several of my friends in Orlando and the Valley have similar setups.
We have integrated our implants with cell phones, vending machines, motorcycles, doors, cars, laptops... even candy dispensers. There were ~200 of us three years ago. Now we are well into the thousands and growing rapidly as we empower other crazy people with our ideas.
It is a bit like having tiny superpowers. Keep an eye on this space because it might be a part of your life sooner than you think.
Can you link us to more info on the NFC implant? Is this useful for auth like a YubiKey?
What is the state of the art on battery-powered implants? How far out is sourcing energy directly from the body? I guess inductive charge is an important option here.
Has the neodymium implant served any practical useful purpose for you? That seems more interesting to me than the electronics in some sense, because of how quickly anything silicon becomes obsolete.
There is no secure element in the chip, so it can not directly replace a yubikey. It could however hold encrypted data or be used to replace car keys etc. When it comes to physical access I normally just authenticate using the devices hard coded UUID. This is at least significantly better security than a traditional metal key which can be trivially picked. I modify things with NFC Reader/arduino/relay setups to read my UUID and start/stop lock/unlock things such as my motorcycle.
You also have 1k of read/write storage so there are a number of interesting possibilities there. Mine often contain my info as a vcard so anyone can tap my hand to import my contact info. Or sometimes it might launch a rickroll.
The magnet has been really interesting. I am constantly finding EMF around me. Knowing if a power strip is on without fiddling with it, knowing if wires are hot without touching them, knowing when I fill up a soda cup exactly where under the counter the motor is, knowing where transformers are in walls. It is I admit mostly a curiosity, but I have learned to use it as a tool instinctively. When I am trying to hold screws up in hard to reach places, when I have lots of tiny screws I need a secure place to hold, or when I drop a screw in a spot just big enough for a single finger to reach. I don't even think about it anymore. It is just like "oh I have this tool" or "oh there is EMF over there". It is interesting how the brain just starts to accept new abilities to the point they can be used passively.
It also has some fun side effects. For a while I thought the compass in my smartphone was broken. Had to learn to stop holding it in my right hand. I can "feel" music if i put my finger near a speaker. Hard to describe. Equally hard to describe is when I encounter a string magnet and the magnet under my skin flips. It is... not painful, but certainly not enjoyable. Would do it all over again though.
Do your finger and hand implants trigger airport metal detectors? I'm not sure how sensitive those machines are, but typically they let through people with a bit of metal on them (e.g. wallets with several RFID-enabled cards).
Perhaps the neodymium magnet would trigger a response. Is that a popular implant?
Not nearly sensitive enough. Humans often have all kinds of metal in their bodies. Medical pins, shrapnel, fillings, etc. Not an issue.
It is a fairly popular implant. I have personally met multiple other people with them outside my circle of friends with them. It is customary to touch your magnet fingers together to feel the odd tingle.
The last few paragraphs really hit home for me - The Singularity is already here... Corporations are thinking machines with all relevant constitutional prerogatives available. Humans are already in service to them, much as animals are to us.
I'm not sure that a mention of a finger magnet and a single "grinder" who temporarily had some body sensors qualifies as a whole cutting-edge transhuman movement in Pittsburgh. It's certainly interesting to reflect on the possibilities and to marvel at those quirky enough to experiment on themselves. But this article seems more like a basic review of sci-fi from the last 60 years rather than a peek into the transhuman movement, to whatever extent such a thing actually exists.
"It’s the old trope, echoed by Philip K. Dick for one"; I always felt that Jack Vance got short shrift on this. In the ~1958 "Languages of Pao" he had body augmentation as a major subplot:
"... The anti-gravity mesh was laid into the bottom of the feet and connect to the processors in the calves by means of flexible tubes thrust up from the feet ... a switch was installed under the skin of the left thigh..."
Almost certainly the all too brief "Technomages" of Babylon-5 were based on these Vance characters.
We have integrated our implants with cell phones, vending machines, motorcycles, doors, cars, laptops... even candy dispensers. There were ~200 of us three years ago. Now we are well into the thousands and growing rapidly as we empower other crazy people with our ideas.
It is a bit like having tiny superpowers. Keep an eye on this space because it might be a part of your life sooner than you think.
After wearables become the norm that is...