Wetware hacker

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A wetware hacker is one who experiments with biological materials to advance knowledge, and does so in a spirit of creative improvisation.

The word wetware refers to biological materials, by analogy to the words hardware, software, and firmware. The word wetware is used to cover psychoactive pharmaceuticals, bionic materials, or cyborg applications -- any blending of biology and technology that creates an artificial hybrid. DNA's role as the "software" of living systems also suggests that all living systems can be treated as such wetware.

The word hacker has its origins in the Tech Model Railroad Society at MIT in the 1960s, in which creative overhaul of the communal model railroad display was done by students called track hackers. (Hacksaws were often used to construct and modify the equipment, with a "clever hack" being one appreciated by all.) By analogy, gene hacking is the deliberate restructuring and recombining of DNA.

While the word hacker connotes relentless dedication to ongoing improvement by improvisation, ideally to the benefit of the entire community, the Law of Unintended Consequences is frequently mentioned in discussions of wetware hacking, especially the nanotechnology gray goo problem.

Pioneer wetware hackers in the area of psychoactive drugs and their effect on the human mind include:

Aldous Huxley (author of The Doors of Perception)
Timothy Leary (LSD experimenter)
Philip K. Dick (paranoid-schizophrenic science-fiction writer)

Much recent discussion of wetware hacking has focused on the use of nanotechnology to transform human embodiement (e.g. Ray Kurzweil). Some writers and theorists ( (e.g Jean Baudrillard, Richard Doyle, Brian Rotman, Paul Virillo) have suggested that wetware hacking is already an effect of living in an intensifying information ecology. These writers argue that one can alter, wither or intensify the phenomenology of embodiement through the use of different information technologies. Timothy Leary's mantra for programming psychedelic experience - "Turn on, Tune in, Drop Out" - can be seen as an early recognition of the immense capacity of even the metaphors of information technology (television) to alter identity and experience.

Mary Shelley wrote a novel titled Frankenstein about the social ramifications of man-made life, as did H. G. Wells with The Island of Doctor Moreau. Rudy Rucker has written a science fiction novel titled Wetware.

With the advent of cheap and readily available recombinant DNA and protein synthesis equipment, and the proliferation of biotechnology skills, wetware hacking is expected to be a growing activity in the 21st Century.