VIDEO: They thought I hacked my body. I really hacked my mind. | Liviu Babitz | TEDxAntwerp * 2023
VIDEO: They thought I hacked my body. I really hacked my mind. | Liviu Babitz | TEDxAntwerp * 2023

Liviu Babitz has a compass on his body

The North Sense is something that is a constant part of you. You don’t decide to leave your eyes at home, or your ears at home. They are always there; they are always giving input to your brain; it’s a constant flow of information. This is where the difference happens. You remember things by what you see or what you smell; you will also start remembering things by your orientation with Earth’s magnetic field. The brain will start embedding this information into your perception of reality.

Liviu Babitz is an entrepreneur and cyborg. He is the co-founder and CEO of Cyborg Nest, a tech company that aims to expand people’s perceptions of reality; the company’s digital product – the North Sense – is a Bluetooth-enabled dermal implant that vibrates each time one faces in a magnetic northward direction.

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Liviu Babitz early life of a cyborg

Liviu Babitz was born in Romania in the 1980s. He grew up there and lived there when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. He then moved to Israel in the 1990s and was exposed to the new implementations of technology. Babitz eventually served in Israel’s army.

Eventually started his career wanting to make a positive impact on the world. In 2010, he became the COO of Videre est Credere, a global network that equips oppressed communities in hard-to-access areas with cameras, technology, and training to safely.

Their goal was to expose violence, human rights violations, and other systemic abuses. Babitz worked undercover to build secret networks of people who use technology and document these rights violations. In May 2016, Babitz founded Cyborg Nest. He currently serves as the company’s CEO.

His work in the wetware world

In 2015, Liviu Babitz went by the name Carlos. Living undercover as the chief operating officer of Videre Est Credere, he designed and organized the distribution of custom-made hidden cameras with which citizens could film human rights violations. The organization’s name, in Latin, translates as “to see is to believe.”

Today, Liviu designs artificial senses for Cyborg Nest, the company he helped co-found in 2015. It is the first to make biohacking—a DIY body-modifying movement—commercial. Through their inventions, he hopes other invisible phenomena, like magnetic fields and inaudible sounds, will be detectable by the human body.

In December 2016, Babitz had the North Sense, one of the company’s first artificial senses, attached to two piercings on his chest. It acts as a digital compass that vibrates every time he faces Earth’s magnetic pole. Hundreds of people have ordered the $350 USB-chargeable, waterproof device online and will have them installed in the coming months. Babitz is convinced that someday, in the not-too-distant future, we’ll all be cyborgs.

Liviu Babitz always knows where north is with the device on his chest * Todo lo relacionado