Five years ago, Verge reporter Adi Robertson implanted a magnet in her finger. Now the magnet has faded, and so has the fervor around this kind of elective biohacking.
While technology for the disabled continues to make impressive progress, with cochlear implants and sophisticated prosthetics, it’s still nowhere near sophisticated enough to, say, voluntarily replace your real arm with a fake one.
“Cyborgs are rich metaphors, but they’re not very practical,” says Robertson. Wearable technology is usually the better option; it’s a lot easier to upgrade, and a lot easier to remove. But even though her finger magnet is now just a stray piece of metal, and the embedded NFC chip with her Twitter info is only good for party tricks, she’s glad for these little upgrades.
“The metaphorical value is the point. The magnet was a little piece of the future.”
I Hacked My Body for a Future That Never Came [The Verge]
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