The Last Word On Nothing

A few months ago, in a dark club on the always-busy 6th Street in downtown Austin, there was a very odd party going on. To get in, you had to show a thin metal badge with a dancing woman etched into it. Projected onto the wall above the DJ playing house music there was a big counter that read: “Steps: 646873”. Every 15 minutes or so, the number crept up. “Steps: 646934.” The party was an “Interactive Wearables Concert.” Attendees were encouraged to connect their devices so they could add to the total on the wall.

This was the event that kicked off the first ever BodyHackingCon, “A Con as Unique as Its Attendees.” And the attendees certainly were unique. At one table, set back away from the dance floor, a group of men in jeans and t-shirts who could have walked out of any Office Max in any state. The grinders. On the dance floor, people in long leather skirts, zebra print onesies and fancy leather fanny packs. The burners. There were the health hackers, muscled and wearing tight shirts to show it off. Team mindfulness wore flowing pants and a serene look.

BodyHackingCon aimed to bring all these groups together under one roof, to explore everything from butter coffee to prosthetics. I saw a researcher from UT Austin give a fascinating talk about her work making ultra-thin epidermal sensor tattoos. Later that day, there was a talk called “Introduction to Golden Shield”, which included a demonstration of some martial arts techniques. The next day there was a panel on cyborg rights, and a demo on “All-Natural Skincare for Radiant Health.”

But perhaps the best way to sum up the mixture of people at BodyHackingCon might be by taking a look at the questions asked after the very first talk. Neil Harbison kicked off the sessions with a talk about his unique implant. Harbison was born without the ability to see colors, and has remedied the problem by affixing an antenna to his head that translates colors into sound. When the camera picks up a color, it translates that color into a sound wave and vibrates the implant embedded into his skull. After his talk the first three questions, loosely paraphrased were: “What happens when you take psychedelic drugs,” (the burners) “What is that antenna actually made of?” (the engineers) and “Can you see people’s chakra’s?” (the mindful).

None of these groups has an exclusive claim to the concept of bodyhacking. Grinders hack the body by opening it up and putting things into it: magnets, RFID chips, sensors, headphones, solar panels. Health hackers alter the way the body works through diet and meditation. Some people are interested in hacking the body through drugs or through exercise. A walk around the expo hall at BodyHackingCon featured all of these. On one end, Amal Graafstra, the founder of the online grinder shop Dangerous Things, was inserting RFID chips into peoples’ hands (including mine). On the other end, the company EPIC was showing off their granola bars made of meat.

The event organizers was able to bring this eclectic mix together because their definition of body hacking is a broad one. “Understanding the body as a system, and changing it to do what you want,” is how Trevor Goodman, the Event Manager for Body Hacking Con, defines bodyhacking. So that includes things like bodybuilding and probiotics and meditation and quantified self and implants. “I’m not into bodybuilding personally, but I can look at those guys and ladies and see they’re doing some really cool stuff with their bodies,” Goodman  says.

But all of this made me wonder: does it make sense to try and unify bodyhacking? Does it make sense to try and get grinders talking to skin care experts and martial arts gurus? Is putting butter in your coffee in the same universe as putting a magnet in your hand? And I wondered if casting a net so wide that it made the concept of bodyhacking meaningless.

Goodman says they did have to make some kind of choices about what makes something bodyhacking and what doesn’t. Does a car count as hacking my body if it gives me the ability to move faster than my body ever could? No. “We are trying to limit it a little,” Goodman says, “We don’t want to have a car show at the expo. So we’re trying to limit it to things you can personally apply to your own body and we’re trying not to stretch it too much beyond that.” So under their definition, things like tattoos and hair dye count, because they apply directly to the body. But something like a car or a plane doesn’t count. Neither does engineering another species to do something, like folks who make plants glow in the dark.

But there are some weird exceptions. According to Goodman, hoverboards count, although he and Trammel don’t totally agree about that. “The furthest we’ll stretch it to is personal mobility stuff,” Goodman says, “and that I’m kind of ehhh about but Dustin’s really into it so we include it.”

In the end, Goodman said that what fell into their category often came down to instinct. “It’s hard, it’s kind of a gut feeling who fits in and who doesn’t.” But he also says that he doesn’t worry too much about the definition being so broad that it becomes useless.  “In a way, I personally love for it to be a useless definition. Because the more it’s useless the less it’s flashy and scary to people.”

And there’s another tactic at play here too. Goodman hopes that by lumping these groups together, some of the more controversial forms of bodyhacking will become easier for people to swallow. It’s not hard for most people to accept the idea of mindfulness and meditation, but those same people might find the idea of cutting open your hand to insert a tiny magnet or RFID chip totally unfathomable. By putting them into the same group, Goodman hopes to make things like grinding a bit more mainstream by association. “We want to normalize it and make it boring. I want it to be as boring as putting on an EEG headset and meditating.”

So while the conference might have seemed like an unlikely gathering, it was all by design. Whether it will work or not, is another question. Some of the grinders I talked to at the party wrinkled their noses at the fitness and wellness booths in the expo hall. And some of the health and wellness folks blanched when they found out I had just had an RFID chip inserted into my hand at a table just a few feet away from them. It will take more than a wearables concert and a few days of talks to make them co-conspirators.

Goodman plans to have the conference again next year, and he hopes to make it bigger, better and more collaborative. Instead of a wearables concert, they’re picturing a fashion show. And when I asked him if he thought the definition would be meaningless by next year he laughed. “Maybe ten years down the line,” he says, “but right now that’s not a problem we have.”