Implantable Technologies Will Change Our Lives, Here's Why

As we embrace the digital age, people are becoming more and more connected to devices, and those devices are increasingly becoming connected to their bodies. We are seeing a paradigm shift where devices are not just being worn, but also implanted into bodies, serving communications, location and behaviour monitoring, and health functions. We can see these early innovations in pacemakers and cochlear implants, and they were just the beginning, with many more health devices consistently being launched. These devices will be able to sense the parameters of diseases; they will therefore enable individuals to take action, send and share data to monitoring centres, or potentially release healing medicines automatically. Smart tattoos and other unique chips are no longer a thing you see in Sci-fi movies, they are already helping with identification and location. Implanted devices will most likely also help to communicate thoughts normally expressed verbally through a “built-in” smartphone, and potentially even unexpressed thoughts or moods by reading brainwaves and other signals.

We believe that the tipping point for this technology to go mainstream will be the first implantable mobile phone available commercially, and this should happen around 2023 according to our data. By 2025, we should be fully reaping the benefits of implantable technology and seeing it go mainstream with plenty of use cases; health and medical being the forefront of this.

Positive impacts:

Reduction in missing children
Increased positive health outcomes
Increased self-sufficiency
Better decision-making
Image recognition and availability of personal data (anonymous network that will “yelp” people)

Negative impacts:

Privacy/potential surveillance
Decreased data security
Escapism and addiction
Increased distractions (i.e. attention deficit disorder)

Unknown and controversial:

Longer lives
Changing nature of human relationships
Changes in human interactions and relationships
Real-time identification
Cultural shift (eternal memory)

Example of implantable technologies in action:

A team at Brown University called BrainGate is at the forefront of the real-world movement to link human brains directly to computers for a host of uses. As the BrainGate website says, ‘using a baby aspirin-sized array of electrodes implanted into the brain, early research from the BrainGate team has shown that the neural signals can be “decoded” by a computer in realtime and used to operate external devices.’ Chip maker Intel predicts practical computer-brain interfaces by 2020. Intel scientist Dean Pomerleau said in a recent article, ‘Eventually people may be willing to be more committed to brain implants.’ Imagine being able to surf the Web with the power of your thoughtshttps://au.news.yahoo.com/technology/a/25293925/nine-real-technologies-that-will-soon-be-inside-you/

See the history of technology and how it’s evolving.