One of the inspirations for Vintiner’s journey into this culture was Professor Kevin Warwick, deputy vice-chancellor at Coventry University, who back in 1998 was the first person to put a silicon chip transponder under his skin (that enabled him to open doors and switch on lights automatically as he moved about his department) and to declare himself “cyborg”. Four years later Warwick pioneered a “Braingate” implant, which involved hundreds of electrodes tapping into his nervous system and transferring signals across the internet, first to control the movements of a bionic hand, and then to connect directly and “communicate” with his wife, who had a Braingate of her own.
In some ways Warwick’s work seemed to set the parameters of the bodyhacking experience: full of ambition, somewhat risky, mostly outlawed. The Braingate system is now being explored in America to help some patients suffering paralysis, but Warwick’s DIY work has not been widely taken up by either mainstream medicine, academia or commercial tech companies. He and his wife remain the only couple to have communicated “nervous system to nervous system” through pulses that it took six weeks for their brains to “hear”.
While this segment is the most interesting, the whole article is a long and fascinating journey into the biohacking counter-culture.