Hack My Happy Chemicals

A tiny microchip can tell you temperature, but it should be able to tell you how to make a billion dollars.

It’s smaller than a piece of dust, it’s implanted in your body, and it will change how humans interact with technology.?

The world’s smallest implantable chip, less than 0.1 cubic millimeters and only visible with a microscope, uses ultrasound (traditional radio-frequency waves are too big in comparison to the chip) to wirelessly power and transmit data about your body.

In theory, at least. The chips have only been tested on lab rats, successfully using the chips to monitor body temperature.?

A team of scientists out of the University of Colombia say the tech could be used for all of those metrics a doctor goes over at a checkup: temperature, blood pressure, glucose, respiration.

It sounds a bit scary, getting injected with a microchip. But it’s a question everyone has with their friends: “Would you get a chip implanted into your brain?”

Elon Musk and Neuralink spurred that question across many living rooms at the beginning of 2020 when a video of a monkey playing a video with its mind surfaced on the web.

The Tesla CEO released a whitepaper on brain-machine interfaces in 2019 that envisioned patients with a spinal cord injury controlling a digital mouse and potential of restoring the ability to walk.

It sounds futuristic. But as you sit back and picture what technology could actually be capable of accomplishing, it seems prehistoric.

Those scientists in Columbia and Neuralink probably scoff at that statement as they toil away at actualizing these amazing futures. Fortunately I have the luxury of not being smart enough to build innovations, just smart enough to think about them.

Like this recent boom of virtual worlds. Facebook announced a haptic glove while Nintendo had a Power Glove in 1980. IMVU and Second Life have had avatars living different lives for over a decade.?

And a chip to tell temperature seems like it should already exist, because it seems like more than that should exist.

Humans going through life get caught in a cycle of chemicals that push them through their days, positively or negatively.?

Where is the software that can tell me what activities give me a spike of dopamine, and then categorizes those into what I see as progressive toward a goal I have.

If humans can read some of these vital brain chemicals that navigate, generally, happiness and sadness, then they can take energy out of everything that doesn’t progress them toward a lofty goal.

They’ll be able to optimize who they’re interacting with, what they’re doing, and how they think to create a positive feedback loop.?

If a relationship with a person or activity is triggering happy chemicals but not leveling them up toward their lofty goal, they become explicitly aware of that fact and eke out that habit into a habit that does level you up.

The more they can accomplish positive benchmarks to release positive brain chemicals, track and consciously take note of that process, the healthier the feedback loop will become.?

Those who care the most will be able to hack their way into flipping that feedback.?

They will be able to unlink themselves from short-term, happy chemical-inducing activities that do not help a long-term vision and wean themselves onto enjoying what is less enjoyable in the short-term but advantageous for a future goal, picking up their happy chemical releasers at checkpoints along the way.?

Give me that technology, scientists at Columbia, and I might be more inclined to implant your chips into my body.

November 19 2021