Opus 2016-222: DEFCON: Hacking Minds

I have attended DEFCON, a convention for computer hackers and security specialists.  I saw  the results of public education all around me.  You might think of public education as a case of mental hacking:  Getting into the software of a person and making it believe a reality that does not exist.  I saw it at DEFCON in what they called the Biohacking Village.

The Biohacking Village was a venue of smaller sessions in rooms off to the side.  It is one of several that are designed to give new ideas a chance to grab hold and grow.  The concept shows that DEFCON is trying to expand and include more people with different interest.  Biohacking has to do with the attempts by modern science to change the human body.  I only attended two sessions so I can’t set myself up as an authority on the subject. 

The first session was called “Oday for the Soul”.  I Googled “Oday” and got a lot of people with variations of that name so I remain in mystery to the reference.  The young lady in charge had some very eclectic religious views.  She was amazed that the child of a “parson” could become a geek and thought we would be amazed also.  Not really.  I had been a parson and my son was a geek.  She said part of her rebellion was converting to Catholicism and then proceeded to joke about the wine she was drinking being sacramental and kept repeating that what she said was against her religion.  In summary:  A standard confused millennial.  She repeatedly bragged about her IUD and called it biohacking.  She equated makeup and breast implants with the chip she had in her arm.  All were biohacking to her.  She had fun and made no sense, at least to me.  I am open to the problem being in my ears, not her mouth.

The second session was on biohacking ethics.  I felt like I was at a faculty meeting.  The speaker was a medical doctor.  He obviously had an education with a diploma and everything.  Being taught the benefits of group work by his teachers he spent most of the time having us share our thoughts and feelings with the person next to us.  In the last five minutes he got to ethics but most of it was a rant against “the man”.  When someone questioned him he laughingly accused the guy of being “the man”.  He called for the redistribution of wealth because of greed.  I wanted to ask him how much of his doctor’s salary he was donating to the local soup kitchen but since I wanted to get out alive I remained silent.

So I sat in a session that demonstrated biohacking of the minds.  Unfortunately it was the minds of the speakers who had been hacked and they didn’t even know it.

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