Dark Net

The Web transforms us.

We become data, code...

uploading our very selves...

...to a place we call the cloud.

But this cloud is grounded in hardware...

a chaos of code.

But with the right tools,

you can find the signal in the noise.

So, when I was 9 years old,

I was at my grandfather's farm in Ireland.

And I thought it would be a good idea

to get his 12-gauge shotgun...

...and shoot a pile of cow shit.

Uh, and I did that.

And, boom.

Unfortunately, I wasn't holding the gun correctly.

To me, upgrading is a part of modern life.

In my case, it's satisfying to be able

to upgrade what is basically an opportunity.

I'm hacking my own body.

And I'm doing it in such a way that...

I'm improving the code, hopefully.

Inside your computer,

if you listen hard enough,

there's a hum, a heartbeat, a pulse.

Like us, technology lives, dies, and evolves.

We embrace each new version faster than the one before.

And our devices have gone from a convenience

to a dependence...

an extension of ourselves.

When you look into the deep web,

you find a glimmer of a stranger future.

The question is,

what happens when we become more than human?

So, um, welcome, everybody, to Epicenter.

Just a quick show of hands...

How many of you have been to Epicenter before?

My name is Fanny Mardirossian,

and I am a graphic designer.

I am into new stuff.

I'm a curious person, and I am a tech nerd.

I like gadgets.

So I like to get ahold of stuff

as soon as possible when they reach the market.

What we do here at Epicenter,

as this is a house of innovation,

is, we try to explore new technology.

Epicenter... It's kind of a start-up cluster

for creative people to meet.

They also have tons of new tech stuff to try out.

We're actually doing an implant party tonight, as well,

so for those of you who want to try the latest tech,

you can get chipped here today on the sixth floor here.

I met this guy, Hannes.

He told me about a new type of tech.

I thought it was super-cool.

The idea is that you're putting something into your body

and the tech being part of you.

I certainly consider myself human.

However, I may not want to be just human

for the rest of my life.

I'm Hannes Sjoblad, I work at Epicenter,

and I'm a biohacker.

What we biohackers do is, we look at biology

as something that can be hacked.

Is there something we can do to this being

to change a little way, to make it do something else?

We are not scientists.

We are experimenters.

My implant is a microchip in my left hand,

which is about the size of a grain of rice.

I use it to access the office.

I just swipe my hand at the door.

I can turn off the alarm.

I can log into the different computers.

It uses RFID technology.

Chances are, you already use RFID,

or radio frequency identification tags,

without knowing it.

They're in our access cards, our credit cards,

our cellphones, and our passports.

We even use them to tag our livestock and our pets.

What's enticing about this technology

is that we could eventually store

all of our personal information on RFID chips

and never have to carry keys, cards, or cash again.

To upgrade the body with the chip

allows me to speak the language of machines.

We can decide what will be the next step in human evolution.

Hannes belongs to a global community of biohackers

who experiment with do-it-yourself ways

to enhance the human body.

My initial incision was a little shallow.

There we go.

They share their experiences online

for all to see.

And the deeper you look into this world,

the more dangerous it gets.

Biohacking used to be hidden on sites

that were unindexed and impossible to find.

But now anyone can mail-order implant kits

a hacker gadget company that sold 5,000 human microchips

in just the last couple of years.

People all over the world are posting about getting chipped.

But despite the hype, the idea

of implanting a computer chip inside the body

doesn't sit right with everyone.

And one day, we may not have a choice.

Mama, Mama.

It's gonna be a strange feeling

to, like, be the device yourself,

but people do things to their bodies like alter them

and better them in all kinds of ways,

so it's not that big a deal.

But why get chipped

when you can already create a better version of yourself

using external devices?

Technology today, it's all about data.

We're the first generation

to have a choice in how we record our lives.

From NPR News in Washington,

I'm Korva Coleman. South...

I'm tracking mattress movement,

body movement, body temperature.

Reading complete.

Blood pressure, blood oxygen.

Body weight, the air quality,

temperature, humidity.

Partly sunny skies.

Light, sound, what am I eating,

who am I with, what am I watching on TV.

I've been called the world's most connected human.

In the car, I've got a sensor

that measures how often I'm accelerating,

how often I'm hard-braking,

how often I'm going over the speed limit.

Chris Dancy uses up to 700 systems,

11 different wearable devices,

and 71 wireless networks

to monitor and record every second of his life.

The idea to bring more data into my life

really came from massive amounts of anxiety.

Whether it was food or alcohol

or recreational drugs or cigarettes,

I could feel this just heaviness of, you know,

getting older and being unhealthy.

I needed to find a way

to harvest my behavior out of systems.

Chris began logging all of his actions

and looking for patterns.

What I did early on

was just color-coding information

so when it entered my online calendar,

I could tell days that were good from days that were bad

just by looking at the bands on it.

After you become aware of your behavior,

it's just scheduling, like, interruptions to behavior.

By removing triggers for bad habits,

Chris turned his life around.

He lost over 100 pounds in two years, quit smoking,

reduced his stress levels, and increased his confidence.

He might seem unique,

but he's just a more extreme version of the rest of us.

Wearables have become a multibillion-dollar industry

that's only going to keep growing.

Information leads to knowledge,

and knowledge is power, right?

But what if you went a step further?

What if you could collect information about other people

without them knowing it?

Some people hack software.

I hack my face.

My name's Rob Spence.

I'm a filmmaker, and they call me Eyeborg.

So many characters in science fiction and pop culture

have prosthetic eyes.

You know... the Terminator

or Geordi from "Star Trek."

It's an interesting idea

to have a realistic-looking camera eye.

I mean, that's what the Bionic Man had.

We can rebuild him.

So that's what I want.

As a documentary filmmaker,

one of the things you always want

is for somebody to act naturally.

And what better way to get somebody to act naturally

than to hide the camera in an eye?

One that looks like a human eye,

where the person doesn't know that you're recording them.

This is a way that I can use technology...

in an empty eye socket

to get a very human piece of film,

a very human conversation.