This special episode is the second of 5 talks delivered on stage at StartWell's Event Space on King St W in downtown Toronto on November 28, 2019 for a globally roaming annual series called Dark Futures.

This talk was presented by Oksana Andreiuk (https://canadianbiohacker.com/) and is titled "You're already a cyborg and it's about to get weirder."

*Dark Futures is presented by globally renowned Futurist, speaker, researcher, and author Nikolas Badminton. (https://nikolasbadminton.com/)

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Qasim Virjee 0:18

Welcome back to this the 26th episode of the stairwell podcast. As always, I'm your host, Qasim Virjee, the CEO and founder of start well, and this episode is special. We have the second talk that was presented at dark futures y, y, z as part of a miniseries that we're broadcasting over the internet on iTunes and Spotify. I hope you enjoy it. It's a talk by Oksana and Dre, who has graced our stage at start well before talking about biohacking. This time, her title talk is you are already a cyborg, and it's about to get weirder.

Oksana Andreiuk 1:00

Thanks, everyone. So I'm so excited to be talking to you today. First one up to tell you about the fact that hey, you're a cyborg, and it's about to get weirder a little bit about myself and my background is in genetics and biotechnology. I also founded the first and largest biohacking longevity group in Toronto. So if you're interested in more talks like this, check out the group or follow me on instagram Canadian bio hacker where I share my personal biohacking tips, my learnings and product reviews. So without further ado, are we ready to hear about the super convergence of technologies? Yes, we're gonna talk about what's gonna happen when genetic biotechnology and AI collide. So some of you will think, you know, some of these things are so far out there, it's not gonna happen within my generation. I don't need to worry about this. But truth be told science fiction 15 years ago is possible today with products like stem cells, growing livers in pigs, and pacemakers. Simple enough. 15 years ago, that was a wild idea. Just this year earlier, a human got electrodes implanted in his brain along with a few other people in the clinical trial to test how we can reduce the effects of Parkinson's disease. So there are going to be humans walking around with electrodes in their brain soon. Again, this is Toronto's very own Rob Spence, who is a documentary filmmaker. This is from 2011. This is a while ago, almost 10 years ago, we had a person actually implanted bionic camera eyeball, into his eye, or in place of his eye. And earlier this year, again, another man who was blind actually got a real bionic eye that's connected to his brain that allowed him to see the world. What's next, scientists are working on injecting US soldiers to allow them to have night vision. Now we're getting really bionic, because this is going beyond the what's normal for humans to have right. Now, those are all medical, clinical procedures, they seem a little while they're more on the medical side. What can we do as consumers though? Are there any products out there? Yes, we're starting to see more and more consumer products hitting the market that allow us to surpass our natural human capabilities, products like Halo, neuro sport. So this is a tool in the fitness realm of things. So if you're into fitness, you might be interested in something like this. So this device actually puts an electrical current into your brain into the areas that have to do with muscle memory, that allow you to train more effectively. So if it conjures up memories of, you know, 60s, scary neuro psychology experiments of electro shocking people and patients, well, now there are products on the market that allow you to do this to yourself, but safely. So you may be thinking, you know, those are a