Jumping the Carbon-Silicon Boundary for Fun and (Mostly) Profit

Presented at HOPE X (2014), July 20, 2014, 6 p.m. (60 minutes).

Kevin Warwick made history in 1998 with an RFID chip implanted under his skin. He went on to use sophisticated electrodes to control a robotic arm, achieved human to human nervous system hookups, and even tried transatlantic teledildonics with his wife. Fast forward to 2014 as eager consumers strap on wearable fitness monitors and allow Samsung's creepy eye icon to track their gaze, just so their video will pause when they look away. Worried about Google learning your habits from your Nest thermostat? Your Nike+ FuelBand probably knows a lot more about you, like those times you burned 150 calories at 3 am without taking a single step. Japan's smart toilets realize you're getting sick before you do, and they can tell your doctor. Or, perhaps, your insurance company. This talk presents some of the most intriguing privacy-invading body technologies and looks forward warily to the near future, when the skin cells you leave on a store's PIN pad might be DNA sequenced without your knowledge. You won't believe how many people are after your body-data, and how much it's going to be worth on the open market. There are things you can do to protect your bio-privacy, but you have to start now!


Presenters:

  • Tom Keenan
    Tom Keenan learned to program in FORTRAN and assembly language in the 1960s at a secure computer facility in New York City, presumably to help America fight the post-Sputnik Russian menace. Instead, he was often seen around the early 2600 meetings and also playing with pay telephones. He went on to a respectable career as a computer science professor and technology journalist in Canada. He has interviewed interesting people from John Draper (Cap'n Crunch) to Arthur C. Clarke to FBI, NSA and State Department officials. In addition, he co-wrote the award-winning CBC Radio series Crimes of Future. He also helped design Canada's first computer crime laws and is a fellow of several prestigious societies. Currently professor of environmental design at the University of Calgary, he is the author of the new book: Technocreep.

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