ShareThis1 |
Have a magnet implanted in my finger, like this guy: http://feelingwaves.blogspot.com/ so that I can feel electromagnetic fields. |
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Pretty easy to test. The criteria are (1) the magnet goes in (2) it doesn't get infected/rejected (3) I can feel electromagnetic fields in my finger. |
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Either the implant will be rejected, or it will stay in for a significant period of time (maybe 3 months is a good cutoff, based on what I've read). In either case I'll be done. |
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I've never had any body modding done before. This is a new and interesting adventure. |
Create an Experiment
Brock Tice
- Member Since
- 08/10/09
- About Human, husband, father, (atheist) zen buddhist, tidy, good neighbor, thrifty, starting a cardiac simulation services company, doesn’t worry about current events, reads for pleasure, tries to keep his home and his things safe and sound, occasional home improvement DIYer, trying to keep ties to close friends and family despite moving all over the country.
- Web http://virtuallyshocking.com
- Experiments 19
- Observations 297
Comments & Observations
Brock Tice Magnet was implanted this weekend. So far the area is pretty tender. I had it put on the middle-finger side of my left ring finger, and already I can type using the affected finger. Thats good, because I type all day. Currently, if anything brushes the implant site, it hurts pretty badly.
May 03, 2010
Brock Tice Just replaced the band-aid and bacitracin. So far it looks pretty good -- the suture seems to be helping the incision heal nicely.
May 03, 2010
Brock Tice Tenderness is down somewhat. Replaced band-aid and antibiotic just now. Gently washed hands with soap and water between band-aids. Noticed that the incision pried open a bit where not sutured when I patted dry. Oops! Have to be more careful with that.
May 03, 2010
Brock Tice Replaced band-aid and antibiotic this morning, washed hands gently with warm water and soap in-between. Still looking good. Definitely less tender this morning, and no throbbing (could feel my pulse in it before) yet today.
May 04, 2010
Matthew Cornell In-freaking-credible experiment, Brock! Who the heck did the surgery? Or maybe you don't want to share. Good self-care on the recovery. Maybe I'll try the simulated version (http://feelingwaves.blogspot.com/2009/01/experience-sensation-without-implant.html).
Can't wait to see how this goes!
May 04, 2010
Brock Tice Thanks! This is rather controversial in some circles, so I've been asked not to disclose who did it, at least until we see how it heals up.
May 04, 2010
Brock Tice Delayed observation: Last night I changed the band-aid again. There was still a tiny bit of blood on the band-aid. By the end of the day I wasn't having tenderness at the implant site.
May 05, 2010
Brock Tice This morning I changed the band-aid and antibiotic. No blood at all! I was getting kind of worried because it was seeping tiny amounts of blood, which meant it wasn't closed up yet. Now I suppose it's closed or closed enough to prevent such seepage.
I can now also apply reasonable (i.e. not strong/firm) pressure to the implant site without pain. This was good enough that I decided to give the magnet a gentle try. Pressed my finger against the fridge -- nothing. Took a magnet off the fridge and slowly moved it toward my finger. Whoa! I felt it respond, and that is definitely a new feeling. No pain, which is good, but wow. So far it's a very blunt feeling, not much subtlety, just "something moved in my finger!" I expect from all of the accounts I've been able to find online that it'll be a few weeks before I get much finer sensation in the implant.
May 05, 2010
Lizzy Omg what an experiment. You are the Bionic Man. Wild stuff.
May 05, 2010
Brock Tice Band-aid/antibiotic replaced, had a knowledgeable medical person take a look at the wound -- they said it looked good. Put finger to fridge again and thought I could feel a slight pull. Not sure, though. I can apply low to moderate pressure to the site without pain, although it seems occasionally I put pressure on it from some angle that really hurts. I'm being mindful of those occasions to try to figure it out, but I'm not sadistic enough to sit poking and prodding it to find it exactly.
May 05, 2010
Brock Tice Did my routine band-aid replacement this morning. Noticed while washing my hands with the band-aid off that the pain I occasionally have might come from things that cause the suture to get tugged on. That would explain the difficulty in narrowing it down. Again, I wasn't about to yank on the suture to find out.
Skin is looking pretty good, much better than the guy at Feeling Waves' skin looked after a whole week, probably because I had a nice incision and suture instead of a big gouge with a large-bore needle. I have to travel this weekend, Sunday, and I think we'll probably be able to take out the suture before then.
May 06, 2010
Matthew Cornell Good analysis, and good news re the suture coming out.
May 06, 2010
Brock Tice Changed the band-aid tonight, and there was a little blood on it. Probably it's due to my lifting/moving some heavy computers around today. I tried to favor the finger, but it still ended up carrying some weight. This is a good reminder to me to continue to coddle it even though it doesn't hurt much anymore.
Still not much in the way of magnetic sensation. I did stick one of the un-implanted spare magnets to my finger last night (through the band-aid), which was nice in a gee-whiz kind of way.
I think at this point the bulk/pointiness of the suture knot/ends is causing a little irritation, and I've compiled further observations that support my suspicion that suture shifts/pulls are what cause the wince-inducing pain I occasionally experience when the band-aid is bumped just so.
May 06, 2010
Brock Tice Someone commented on my Facebook post about this to avoid credit cards with that hand. I may try 'wiping' one of my unused credit cards, then attempting to use it in a store. I'm much more worried about screwing up my LTO-3 tapes. They come with magnetic 'tracks' in them, and as far as I know, become non-functional if you magnet-wipe them. They run about $20 apiece, so I think I'll just handle them right-handed.
May 06, 2010
Matthew Cornell Re: interaction with credit cards, you would love hearing Kevin Fu talk (http://www.cs.umass.edu/~kevinfu/). He's a young professor of CS in the department I worked in who is an expert in hacking small, embedded electronics with wireless connections (basically). He started with RFID chips on credit cards, which he was able to decode. Now he's expanded to biomedical devices. He shows how he could probably induce a heart attack in a pacemaker patient *wirelessly*. So there may be some tricks you could play.
[This video of Kevin's looks cool, BTW: Cooking Scientific Discovery
http://www.m-a-d.asia/index.php?option=com_k2&\1view=item&\1id=71:cooking-scientific-discovery&\1Itemid=58&\1lang=en
- MaD Talk 2010─Prof Kevin FU: Cooking Scientific Discovery (Part 1)]
May 06, 2010
Brock Tice Interesting, I'll have to check him out. The older pacemakers/defibrillators you had to have a big wand right over the chest to access them. Now they're all going 'wandless', meaning they can be read by a little box you hook up to your phone line. When that came out, I started going around at the cardiology conferences I attended, asking the salespeople on the floor, "so, this is encrypted right? What if someone tries to hack into my pacemaker?" They all just nodded blankly or said, "uh, go talk to our engineering guys." Thanks for the ref!
May 07, 2010
Brock Tice Changed the band-aid again this morning. No blood. This lends credence to my idea that all of the squishing involved in lifting computers yesterday caused the bleeding. It occurred to me later it might have squeezed out around the suture, even if the wound itself is closed.
Tested sensation with a fridge magnet again. It was more pronounced (IMO) this morning than it was yesterday.
May 07, 2010
Matthew Cornell While riding home on my bike today I played with my binaural hearing today (turning head from side to side, enjoying the directionality) it struck me whether you could do the same with a pair of implanted magnets. I suppose someone's thought of it, but it might be cool!
May 07, 2010
Brock Tice If this one goes well enough, I may get one in the mirrored location on the right side. Wanted to start with the non-dominant hand. :)
May 07, 2010
Brock Tice Still looking good, taking out the stitch today before I leave for the airport. I got some single-use packages of triple-antibiotic ointment and some more band-aids to take with me.
May 09, 2010
Brock Tice Suture removed. Would looks pretty good. It's just a line with a dot over and a dot under, looks like a 'divided by' sign. For now, band-aid and antibiotic ointment have been replaced. I have more with me to keep covering it until I'm satisfied with the healing.
May 09, 2010
Matthew Cornell Great news!
May 09, 2010
Brock Tice WHOA. I am sitting here waiting for some stress tests to run on a customer's cluster, with nothing else to do, so I put my magnet-finger over my MacBook's power supply. I felt a distinct and mildly painful tingly feeling start in my finger and shoot up my arm. Close to a nerve maybe? Definitely doesn't happen with my other fingers.
May 10, 2010
Brock Tice I'm hoping that feeling gets less unpleasant as it heals more.
May 10, 2010
Brock Tice Just tried again. Was less unpleasant this time, and I was able to localize it to a particular part of the power brick. Woohoo, I have a sixth sense!
May 10, 2010
Matthew Cornell What a shock! ;-) With our other senses, I don't think we can think back to what it was like discovering them. We didn't have the neural patterns for even registering the learning. Maybe it's more like someone who re-gained a sense. Keep us informed!
May 10, 2010
Brock Tice Looks like the old skin is going to come off, which matches the account on Feeling Waves. At this point hopefully it's not gruesome enough to make anyone barf, so here it is:
EDIT: Oh crap, you disabled HTML embedding. Probably for the best. I'll link it instead:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brocktice/4597764616/
May 10, 2010
Matthew Cornell The HTML embedding went away with the last release, as a security precaution. However, it happened somewhat by accident, and I'd very much like to re-enable it. After 1.2 I think; I need to study the risks. (Andy? Jake?)
May 11, 2010
Brock Tice Have been going without a band-aid for several days now. There is clearly a little dry, dead skin on the finger but it's hardly noticeable. I'm waiting for it to come off so that I can see how it's healed underneath.
I've not felt too much in the way of sensation from it, aside from the power supply discovery mentioned above. I'm hoping that (per other accounts) sensation will increase as it heals.
I still get a little pain from it if bumped wrong, but it's a minor annoyance.
I may try to go looking for things to feel soon, starting with security gates at stores and various power supplies in my house.
Interestingly, the power adapter for my wife's macbook doesn't appear to have an EM leak in the same place as mine.
May 14, 2010
Andy O'Shea this has been a really interesting experiment to follow. RE: embedding html, it's a risky bit of business. It makes things such as image sharing much easier, but I still don't recommend it because of the potential for abuse via xss and cscf attacks (and limited abilities of "admin" users to control posted content on Edison). Instead, we could add some functionality for a user to upload and embed an image in a comment. Maybe tiny_mce would be a good solution (with an additional image-uploading custom-made module).
Anyways, back to the experiment. This has been really interesting to read about. Definitely not something I would be brave enough to try, so I'm happy to be learning from your experiences, Brock. Looking forward to finding out how fine-grained your bio-mechanical finger's new sense will be. How did you discover this specific implementation of body modding and the website you referred to in the experiment description?
May 15, 2010
Brock Tice Dead skin peeled off. Looks pretty good underneath -- I'll post a pic soon.
Not too many more sensations yet, but I did manage to amuse my 19-month-old daughter at bath time. She has these floating turtle bath toys that have little magnets in the noses and tails, so that they line up end-to-end. I can make them jump toward and follow my finger. She thought it was hilarious. I also amused myself by making compasses move when browsing at REI today.
I tried putting my finger up to a security gate and didn't sense anything. Probably the frequency is too high.
The pain when the magnet is squished is somewhat less. It now feels like a strong but blunted pinch if I squeeze it just wrong. I need to go looking for more things emitting EM fields.
May 16, 2010
Brock Tice To address your question, Andy, I think I'd heard about the magnet implant once before -- there was an article in Wired in I think 2007 that was popular. Recently my interest was piqued while 'exploring' with StumbleUpon. Some dedicated searching on the subject got me to the Feeling Waves site, particularly after the well-known magnet modders refused to send me their implants. That's probably for the best, as the parylene coating seems to be much better (given what I've read from various modders) in the long run than the silicone.
May 16, 2010
Matthew Cornell I like hearing about your experimenting and exploring, Brock. Fine examples of enjoying the ride!
May 17, 2010
Brock Tice Got my dentist to use their fancy digital X-ray system on my finger today. Magnet is right where we put it, far as I could tell from the orientation. I couldn't see my finger bones at all -- not near dense enough for the dental calibration, I guess.
May 18, 2010
Matthew Cornell Clever thinking, getting the dentist to check. They keep cropping up on Edison, though I doubt they'd share public experiments on patients here.
May 19, 2010
Brock Tice Yeah it was actually the hygenist when I went in for a cleaning. Shhh!
May 21, 2010
Brock Tice Was playing with the fridge magnets again this weekend. Noticed two things: 1) The original fridge magnet I used to test the implant can now be sensed from about twice as far away (2cm instead of 1cm, or so), and 2) we have a clip with a magnet on the back -- turns out it's pretty strong. Gave me a strong (but not quite painful) surprise when I passed my finger near it.
May 24, 2010
Brock Tice I should add that the time course of implant/healing/increase in sensitivity is matching pretty well that recorded on Feeling Waves (link in experiment description).
May 24, 2010
Matthew Cornell Very happy it's on track.
May 25, 2010
Brock Tice Can now sense the hum from the transformer powering the speakers in the kitchen -- that's new. Verified with an expert on device implants an MRI machines that I should actually be able to get an MRI once the implant is fully healed (fibrosed in). He said to slowly walk up to an MRI machine while paying attention to my magnet, and that I shouldn't have any problems until I get a few feet from the bore.
Jun 03, 2010
Matthew Cornell Will the sense get more sensitive as you get to know it? What kind of sensitivity will you ultimately have? Hold it in the air?
Jun 04, 2010
Brock Tice 2 things to update: 1) Ordered a medical alert pendant to warn EMTs/ER docs of my magnet and 2) inadvertently found a magnet in my macbook's lid. I believe it's used to sense when the lid is closed. Then was able to find two (they feel larger) that keep the lid closed along the upper edge.
Jun 11, 2010
Matthew Cornell Cool discovery about the Mac magnets! I played with slowly closing the lid and noticing the two catches slide out to the latches. Looks really neat coming down. Question: I forget what you learned about risks to hard drives' magnetic storage...
Jun 15, 2010
Brock Tice The magnetic field from the magnet is very small. Obviously the larger magnets used in the macbook lid are not an issue. Also, on my MacBook, there are no catches (I think the MacBook Pros had/have them?) so there's nothing to indicate the locations visibly.
Jun 15, 2010
Brock Tice So far so good, no rejection issues or anything. It's been just over a month and a half. I set the cutoff at 3 months, so I'll keep checking in until August 03, then mark this done unless something else comes up.
Jun 22, 2010
Matthew Cornell Great!! Will you be making observations with yfd, i.e., cool things you notice?
Jun 23, 2010
Brock Tice Good idea, Matt!
Jun 25, 2010
Brock Tice Presented this as my speech at my Toastmasters meeting last night. People were interested at first, then I stuck one of my spare implantable magnets to my finger and waved it around, and their jaws dropped. Well-received.
Jun 25, 2010
Brock Tice 3 months, no rejection. I don't constantly find new things with my magnet, but I find myself remembering to use it to check out transformers, things with hidden magnets, etc. I'm marking this a success!
Aug 11, 2010
Matthew Cornell On the blog you mention the author talks about how it dramatically changed way thinks re: daily sensory experience and how he conceptualizes the world. Did you notice anything like this?
Aug 11, 2010
Matthew Cornell Hey Brock. What is your take on the experiment at this point? I'd love to hear a short summary!
Aug 31, 2010
Matthew Cornell FYI Your experiment got mentioned in a comment here: http://www.matthewcornell.org/blog/2010/10/24/whats-a-good-experimental-design-to-test-oil-pulling.html . I put that post up to have an appropriate place for the discussion of the benefits of oil pulling, and how one might do a proper study of its claims. I welcome your thoughts there, esp. about how your implanting a magnet experiment relates.
P.S. Any updates on how this has changed your perception?
Oct 25, 2010
Brock Tice I do have an update, that water cooling setup I posted includes a magnetically-driven pump. When I first turned it on I was holding it in my left hand, and immediately got a very strong, interesting, but not unpleasant sensation from the magnet. I enjoyed playing with it for a little while to see where the field was and how it felt.
Nov 22, 2010