The subsequent technology of the “Web of Our bodies,” or IOB, might carry technological units and the human physique nearer collectively than ever earlier than.
Educational and writer Andrea M. Matwyshyn, who coined the time period in 2016, describes it as “a community of human our bodies whose integrity and performance rely at the very least partially on the web and associated applied sciences, comparable to synthetic intelligence.”
The worldwide linked medical machine market alone can be price round $66 billion in 2024 and is anticipated to succeed in greater than $132 billion by 2029, based on market analysis agency Mordor Intelligence.
Matwyshyn recognized three classes of IOB, primarily based on a tool’s stage of integration.
The primary class is exterior. First-generation know-how comparable to smartwatches or rings have change into mainstream methods to trace our steps or coronary heart price. Good glasses, which might operate as cameras, headphones or screens, are one other instance of early IOB units.
The second technology is inner. These are units you ingest or have implanted. Consider pacemakers with digital implants, good prosthetics hardwired into sufferers’ nerves and muscle mass, and even digital capsules that transmit medical information after you swallow them.
Lastly, there’s the third technology. These units utterly merge with the physique whereas sustaining a real-time connection to an exterior machine and the web.
One of the vital notable firms on this area is Elon Musk’s Neuralink, which is growing a mind laptop interface, or BCI, referred to as “the Hyperlink.” The coin-sized chip is implanted underneath the cranium, the place it will possibly learn an individual’s mind indicators and permit them to manage an exterior machine.
Whereas the IOB’s proponents are excited concerning the developments it might carry, particularly to well being care, many, together with Matwyshyn in her unique paper, have privateness and moral issues.
“As bits and our bodies meld and as human flesh turns into completely entwined with {hardware}, software program, and algorithms, IOB will check our norms and values as a society,” she wrote.
“Particularly, it would problem notions of human autonomy and self-governance.”
