"Now you are a cyborg." How biohaking became mainstream

Neil Harbisson. Photo: Ints Kalnins / Reuters

Patrick Kramer sticks the needle into the visitor’s hand and inserts a microchip the size of a rice grain under his skin. “Well, that's it, now you are a cyborg,” he says, and clings to the wound between the index and thumb Guillermo Jeronimo. This 34-year-old Brazilian will use the chip-similar to what is implanted by millions of pets and livestock around the world-to open the doors as a digital business card.

Kramer is the General Director of the Hamburg startup Digiwell, who is engaged in biohaking, that is, the introduction of digital technologies into the human body. According to Kramer, over the past year and a half he implanted about 2 thousand such chips. Personally, he has three in his hands: the key to the office, the storage of medical data and one more to share contact data. Digiwell is one of the few companies offering such services. According to biohaking supporters, at present there are about 100 thousand cyborgs in the world. “Now they ask if you have a microchip, but how many of them you have. We have become the mainstream, ”says Kramer.

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