Amal Graafstra, the founder of Dangerous Things, has provided a global community of body hackers the ability to buy and inject implanted electronics. Graafstra, who has an implant in each hand, says business is booming. “We’ve sold thousands, and the pace is increasing,” he says. “And I think we’ll have some very interesting things to show off in 2016.”
So how can his company sell these devices, with naught but a warning sign on the website? Part of the formula is that people have a hard time winning lawsuits if they choose to use a dangerous item that is clearly labeled as such unless it malfunctions.
The other loophole depends on regulatory gymnastics. “Our products don’t fall under Food and Drug Administration regulation as medical devices, based on their criteria,” he says. “However, we actually had the option, but this would have put our professional body piercer partners into a tough legal situation. They are not medically licensed to handle or install medical devices, so we opted to keep our products out of that arena.”
Others are jumping into that space, but they’re not fringe technophiles who are adopting implants. Doctors, universities and even the Pentagon are getting involved and changing the relationship between man and machine in ways that are more revolutionary than anything the most ambitious grinder could imagine.
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In September, Cerroni and four other members of MakerSpace Dallas met for a class on biohacking. Cerroni, who teaches classes and serves as co-chair of 3-D printing at the nonprofit workshop and laboratory, has been intrigued by the opportunity to bring his tech inside his body. He doesn’t normally rush into things and getting an implant was no exception. Months of research, plotting, evaluation and investigation preceded his choice. Cerroni spent more than six months wearing an RFID bracelet that he could program to interact with the tech around him.
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