Scott Cohen is not losing the north. Literally. An implant hanging from his chest tells him so, vibrating slightly as soon as he is oriented towards magnetic north. In 2016, with his partner Liviu Babitz, also endowed with this 6th sense, Scott Cohen launched into the marketing of a small translucent case capable of providing access to an enriched reality, because he is convinced of it: the time when the 'we were wisely content with our five senses is over. Tomorrow, all cyborgs? What interest is there in adding a new meaning to a time when the first five are already saturated, the hearing is not very quiet in an urban environment, or the sight overexcited by the screens? On the occasion of the "and &" festival, in Belgium, in Leuven, we discussed it with Scott Cohen, who, failing to sell us the implant, presented us with a scenario a little more attractive than anticipated.
Spot the North? Easy, at night, you just have to walk in the half-light without taking your eyes off the polar star, and during the day, to sweep the clear sky to analyze the position of the sun. Two very common situations in our modern lives, in short… (no). Do you have to pull out a compass, then? The American Scott Cohen and the Israeli Liviu Babitz took the vice a step further, by integrating the compass into their body, the " North Sense », A small translucent case attached to their breasts with four piercing studs. Three centimeters long, one centimeter thick: it vibrates as soon as it faces the earth's magnetic field. The two men thought to sell a few copies (at $ 425), but the first 250 were gone very quickly. They are now working on the manufacture of a smaller, subcutaneous implant. A first question comes to us: feel the North, very well, but why?
Usbek & Rica: Why did you want, and why would we want, this artificial 6th sense?
Scott cohen : You know there is more around us than our five senses can detect. For this interview, we are outside, and we know that there are ultraviolet rays, gamma rays, and infrared rays, as well as the electromagnetic field of the planet… A whole lot of things in the middle of which we walk completely unconsciously every day. But other species are aware of it. In particular the electromagnetic field. Many migrating birds, fish, and even dogs apparently, can smell it. Sometimes when you see a dog in a park, before it defecates, it will spin around in a circle, and stop exactly in the north axis. It's crazy ! With my partner, we said to each other: why couldn't humans feel more? It is a question of biological evolution. Evolution has given each species just enough to survive. But today we live beyond evolution. Why not take matters into your own hands? This is how we ended up with the “North Sense”. It's a sense, not a tool, so it's always active, constantly receiving information, whether you asked for it or not. When I'm done talking to you, you're not going to take your ears off and put them back in your pockets. It's the same for this 6th sense, only your brain decides what to do with the information received. It's a sense, not a tool, so it's always active, constantly receiving information, whether you asked for it or not. When I'm done talking to you, you're not going to take your ears off and put them back in your pockets. It's the same for this 6th sense, only your brain decides what to do with the information received. It's a sense, not a tool, so it's always active, constantly receiving information, whether you asked for it or not. When I'm done talking to you, you're not going to take your ears off and put them back in your pockets. It's the same for this 6th sense, only your brain decides what to do with the information received.
You started by testing the implant yourself, before marketing it, and it is now out of stock on your site. Who responded?
On December 14, 2016, Liviu and I inserted two titanium pins into the chest, attached an electronic circuit and some other components to it. We did it for us, but we wanted to make sure we weren't completely crazy. There are a lot of biohackers in the world, people who open their arms with a razor and put a chip in, or others like Neil Harbisson and Moon Ribas, but they are still unique cases, no one else is. has an antenna attached to his skull like Neil ( born with absolute color blindness, the Catalan artist has a device attached to his head that transforms colors into audible frequencies,editor's note). With Liviu we said to ourselves that if this was to be the future of humanity, it couldn't be limited to people who all alone in their rooms hack their bodies. That some do, no problem, but that's not what will get things done. So we started marketing. People needed to be confident: when it comes to modifying your body you need security, most people wouldn't like their buddy to do a piercing for them in a makeshift workshop in a garage.
"We did not have 12 people interested as we hoped, but 250"
We created a Facebook page and a site to offer the product, and we expected to have 10 or 12 people interested, because it's quite extreme, anyway: you have to accept the idea of putting two titanium pins on yourself. in your chest without anesthesia (since this is not a permitted medical procedure, a doctor will not). We didn't have 12 people as we hoped, but 250. Exactly the number of implants we had made. Those who did were doctors, lawyers, university professors, human rights activists. We thought we had a few cool kids with tattoos and piercings, it wasn't that audience at all. They were in their forties, fifties, the oldest in his 70s. Just people who wanted to experience something else, and “go beyond”.
And… is everyone okay? The implant could cause complications.
Yes ! No one is dead… yet (laughs). No one has sued us, which is obviously an issue in the United States where people love to sue. We are now working on a new, much more sophisticated version that will be the size of two grains of rice. You say to yourself: Jasmine rice? Basmati? Simply two long grains of rice that can be inserted under the skin permanently to give the "North Sense". The first implant was a test, the 250 people were guinea pigs like us. Now we want to make it a mass consumer product, just like phones and computers are. It will be common.
Do you really think that it may be "common" to add a new artificial meaning?
I don't think it will, I think it will. I think cyborgism and the new senses fall under the category of unavoidable technologies. Just like autonomous vehicles. Medical technology is going to move in that direction, we're going to start interacting with technology in a very different way. If you think about the time, the energy, and the huge sums of money we spend to make our phones, our homes, our cars smarter, why don't we invest the same time and the same energy in man, so that we ourselves are smarter and better? We will do it, it is inevitable.
The implant works in Bluetooth. You indicate on your site that the user cannot be geolocated and tracked… But there is also an application, what is it for?
We have a platform to build additional options, just like an iPhone can be augmented with apps. Can someone create an app that interfaces with Google Maps? For my part, I think it's the end of the screen generation. Our existing senses cannot gather more information. We're talking about augmented reality, virtual reality, but are my eyes able to take in more information? Same thing for hearing: I can't simultaneously listen to a conversation, a song and a GPS that tells me where to go. But if you hack the brain in a different way and no longer through your existing senses, I will be able to receive information about my orientation, without impacting my other senses. Imagine that you could walk down the street, having a conversation with someone, plus getting an impulse in your body telling you what to do and where to go, right, left. It would be very convenient. We're also working on a development for Instagram. Now when I look at a photo, I see its content but also the orientation of the person who took it, I can feel it with my North Sense.
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What does this feeling look like? So right now, during our interview, you get a sense of where the North is.
(He points in one direction, in a quarter of a second ) There he is. I feel where the North is, and therefore the South, the West, the East, and everything in reality, all the points between the cardinal points. But imagine that I show you sheet music for a song, the notes, the instruments, the lyrics… It's not the same as hearing the “Let It Be” by The Beatles. You can look at a compass, I can explain the directions to you, but it's like reading a sheet music. To experience it like Livio, me and the others is very different.
How do you exchange around these sensations? Around a forum?
Yes. We would probably need a language, too, to describe our sensations. As we have a language around color, sounds, flavors or smells. The feeling is hard to describe. But a lot seems to play out around the memory: next week I will remember our conversation, that we were outside, that the birds kept singing, I will forget some elements, but I will also remember the orientation in which we are.
"Without technology, our lives would be brutal and dedicated to survival"
What's very intriguing about cyborgs is this talk about how to break free from tech, as you do the reverse, you graft it into your body, put it under your skin, you merge with it. she.
I don't think this is paradoxical. The implant is an additional link with technology, but it also serves to distinguish us from it. We all have at our disposal biological technology, like our eyes, and man-made technology. This freed us.
We are unable to control our body temperature, so we use external technologies like clothing to regulate it, which allows us to use the calories vital to the proper functioning of our brain, so that we are able to think and to think. Just as fire freed man. Look at man versus gorillas and chimpanzees, who just eat all day and constantly chew because they don't cook their food. Man cooks, makes his food easier to eat, converts calories more easily, all of this frees us to produce art, dance, sing, listen to music, wonder why the stars are up there in the sky. sky. External technologies have made us more human, freer, without them our lives would be brutal and dedicated to survival. Far from a dystopian vision, technology frees us to be even more human.
But don't we need today to be more disconnected, more detached from screens, more connected to nature?
I completely agree with you. But what distracts us are the interfaces. You walk down the street with your eyes fixed on your screen, the first thing you do when you wake up is look at your phone screen… Why should the interface of all the information around us necessarily be a screen? Our brain is absolutely capable of gathering more information, but we overload our existing senses, especially our sight and hearing. And if you are interested in the food industry or the perfume industry, you know that we also overload our other senses. What I'm saying is: let's not overload them. Let's keep it pure so we can connect, and add more information, but differently. Because we will never go back. What would the last hundred years have been without the automobile? Who has changed our lives so much, but also created pollution? There is always good and bad in everything. Except for Facebook, which is good of course (Laughs).
You mention Facebook, in the turmoil following the Cambridge Analytica affair , around our data leak. What do you do with these legitimate concerns about our data? The technology is in your body… so who could be hacked?
He could be. But my body has been hacked by the media for 50 years. News, newspapers, history books that give me a version designed by a few people. We have been hacked in many ways, it's part of the human condition. The difference with what we are proposing is that the information arrives without a filter. Your Facebook feed is filtered, your magazine filters what you decide to give to people, and you hack your readers' beliefs about the world. With North Sense, raw information comes to us, but rather than a computer, person, or algorithm processing it, only my brain, which receives everything, whether I asked for it or not, decides what to do with it.
How close do you feel to the transhumanist movement ?
In many ways we are part of the transhumanist movement. We are part of the bodyhackers, except that they are more in the do-it-yourself, I spoke earlier about opening the arm to the razor, which one does not do. We are also linked to the community around mindfulness. Almost all the members of our company are very active in this community, around meditation, compassion: for my part, I am vegan, and compassion for me is binary, you have it or not, you are not going sorting out, I'm going to get some for such and such a person but not for this one, for this animal, but not for this one. In fact, we feel much more connected to people who care about nature, animals, the planet, than transhumanists or biohackers.
What he's talking about is great. But I am more in the action than in the speech. In 2016, we wondered what technology was available today, to act right away. But we know that we are heading towards genetic modifications in humans. Sending humans into space is so problematic, you can't even control the radiation humans will be exposed to, and the amount will be huge for a round trip to Mars. Should we not genetically modify ourselves to protect ourselves? Maybe we won't need a mask anymore to breathe oxygen, maybe a genetic modification will be enough for us to breathe differently.
"Why not give him the heart of a lion?" When are we going to start improving man? "
Will it ultimately be necessary, as some transhumanists think, to connect our brains to machines to resist their rise to power?
We see it differently. If what awaits us is to compete against AI and machine learning, it would be better to start augmenting humans as soon as possible. Why invest so much in AI and not in humans? My stepfather had a heart attack a few years ago. We took him to the ER, they opened his chest, operated on him, and the next day he was a cyborg. They had given him a pacemaker. Then they said to him: " You are doing great, you are as fit as any other 75 year old man ". I thought, “ What the fuck? Why not give him the heart of a lion? Why did you just bring him back to this? Why use technology only to keep people at a "normal" level? When are we going to start improving man?
We are starting to do it, precisely: scientific progress is increasing to slow down aging and lengthen life.
Not enough ! I believe in the radical extension of life, but I see no signs of it yet. The average man lives longer and longer, more people live up to 80 years, more up to 100, but we are not yet at those who will live to 110, 120, 150 years, no one has crossed this limit, nor broken barriers. We improve life but we don't extend it, and that's what I want to do. So Elon Musk has some really good ideas, but I don't know what decade he plans to implement them in. We can talk about it, or we can do it, start today. I entered the digital world in the mid-1990s, with 14K and 28K modems, 56K did not yet exist. I didn't tell myself that we had to wait 20 years for 5G! You start with what you have.
What will be your next product after the North Sense? A 7th sense?
For the time being, we are not going to develop anything else for the next few years. We have a million things in mind but we need people to understand that first. It's something big enough that it could take a lifetime for everyone to figure it out. Now, if we need to look further: the North Sense was interesting because other species already have it. The next sense could be a sense that no other species has. Man has made instruments that can measure things like gamma rays, which no species can sense, or neutrinos , which one is bombarded with, but no species can sense. But man could!
But what would be the point?
Well… You can see life in color: do you like it? You don't need to survive, anyway. What about when you listen to music? Or when you see a beautiful painting? What would it be like to feel something else? It could be overwhelming.
Finally, your project resembles the quest for an alternative reality that others seek through spirituality, or drugs ...
Many of us try to achieve the same things in different ways, whether it is with shamans, whether it is through drugs and alcohol, and for me there is nothing wrong with that. We live in such an unnatural environment! Sometimes being completely drunk, taking acids or smoking weed can set you free, and reconnect you. Some take spiritual journeys, others use technology. We're all looking for the same things. And we can combine them: acquire a new meaning and be completely drunk! We are all moving in the same direction and I repeat, we will not go back.
However, for the future of the planet, a number of steps would have to be taken. We do it in town to reconnect with nature - we are removing cars from town centers, we are trying to revegetate - but we would have to go much further , drastically limiting our consumption, our travel ...
I don't think one excludes the other. Walking barefoot on the grass, in the forest or on a beach is obviously essential to reconnect. But people also quickly forget how dangerous these environments were. You are not the one who lives in the jungle surrounded by snakes, spiders and thousands of things that can kill you. Do you want to put lions on the streets of Paris, really? Are you sure you are ready for nature? What about poisonous snakes? Or maybe you don't want that much nature. Because nature can be very cruel.
Usefull article.i like it