Between September 2023 and March 2024, I recorded three conversations with interviewer Tim Ventura for his YouTube interview series. Each one starts from the implants in my hands and walks further out toward the speculative horizon: contactless identity first, then Neuralink, then all the way to the Borg.
Ventura's episode notes introduce me the same way each time: "a book author, TEDx speaker, and CEO of biohacking companies Dangerous Things and VivoKey Technologies." Fair summary.
Episode one: Are Microchip Implants the Next "Wearable"?
The first conversation, published September 1, 2023, frames implants as a category question (are microchips the next wearable?) and covers applications for contactless security, identity, and payments.
Episode two: Neuralink and Brain Implants
Four weeks later, on September 29, we went deeper into the skull. "Is today's smartwatch tomorrow's brain implant?" is the episode's own framing: the evolution from wearables to brain implants, and how they could change the nature of human thought and communication.
Episode three: Neuralink, The Matrix, and the Borg
The third conversation landed March 1, 2024, weeks after Neuralink implanted its first patient. Per the episode notes, that implant carries 64 flexible polymer threads providing 1,024 sites for recording brain activity, and let the patient control a computer mouse by thinking. From there we speculated in earnest: neural interactive simulations like the Matrix, and networked hive minds like Star Trek's Borg Collective. The chapter list runs from "RFID and NFC Implants" straight through "Emergent Consciousness and Superorganisms."