Emerging Technologies
The Internet of Bodies (IoB) — Who Wants Their Body on the Internet
I share my informed perspectives with a condensed review of the IoB literature.
Our bodies are valuable and sacred. They host our consciousness and soul. Connecting biological entities of the human being to a digital world is called the Internet of Bodies. Therefore, digitization of the human body raises substantial concerns by thought leaders in the field.
I have been working in the field of IoT for several years. It is a fascinating topic to me. I shared my concerns on safety, security, and privacy issues in a book and multiple articles. Since 2016, the notion of IoBs has started showing itself in the media and even in academic papers.
IoB stands for the Internet of Bodies and the Internet of Behaviors. They are different concepts. However, upon my literature review, there was only a single paper about the behavior which I cited in the review section. Thus, this article is about the Internet of Bodies which has more published papers in the literature.
Optimists, in general, believe that IoB brain implants can allow disabled people to control their prosthetic limbs, innovative stents can monitor blood clots, and artificial pancreases can manage blood-sugar levels for diabetic patients. Deaf people can hear the sound, and blind people can see with the implementation of smart devices in the body. We can have intimate connections via the integration of physical and virtual worlds.
We already experience techno-biological advances such as neuro-stimulators, prosthetic and bionic devices, DNA sequencing with quantum chips, and nanoparticles for cancer diagnosis and treatment in physical and mental health that can improve our well-being.
Pessimists and neutral people believe that IoB devices and processes can invade our privacy, create significant risks for the integrity of our bodies, and cause loss of control over our bodies in cyberspace.
Both optimists and pessimists have valuable points. While the concept of IoB brings many health and well-being benefits to society, it also creates serious safety, security, privacy, and personal autonomy risks.
Even though I am a technology advocate, I consider myself neither an optimist nor a pessimist regarding the Internet of Bodies. However, IoB seriously concerns me. Therefore, I have been closely watching the progress and reading every possible article, paper, and book about IoB. I mentioned the Internet of Bodies in a few articles before. Therefore, some readers also ask about its relationship with the Internet of Behavior.
In this post, rather than merely sharing my own concerns, I want to provide a broader perspective by reviewing some content from credible sources. I also introduce the intended meaning of these two common phrases and how they affect our feature from technology, health, and economic perspectives.
At this stage collection of IoB data is mainly from external parts of our bodies through a smartwatch or fitness devices analyzed in a central location by proprietary software of private companies. However, the long-term use alludes to disseminating information from internal organs, including from the brain, making information available via an ecosystem supported by Internet communication protocols.
The current situation is entirely unregulated. Therefore, this lack of regulation poses severe risks for extremely sensitive data. Moreover, it is not only a risk at an individual level but also at the national level. For example, in 2018, we read that US soldiers re-revealed sensitive and dangerous information by jogging.
Condensed Literature Review on the Internet of Bodies (IoB)
Let me start the review with this eye-opening scenario presented in this article, titled Searching for Privacy on the Internet of Bodies.
“It’s the year 2075, and the newest generation doesn’t remember life before AI (Artificial Intelligence). Even more frightening, they don’t know the meaning of personal privacy — at least not in the way their grandparents remember it. Someone is always watching you, whether the government, your employer, insurance companies, the bad date you had last week, or some random hacker. Personalized surveillance is just a fact of life now. Nothing lives or dies without being monitored.”
As pointed out in this article titled The Internet of Bodies Needs a Human Data Model, published by IEEE, “Today, creating innovative Internet of Bodies solutions requires manually gathering the needed information from an increasing number of services and personal devices.
The article “tackles this challenge by presenting Human Data Model programming framework for combining information from several sources, performing computations over that information to high-level abstractions, and then providing these abstractions to schedule computer-human interactions proactively.”
According to this paper on HeinOnline, “the challenges of IoB are not purely legal in nature. The social integration of IoB will also not be seamless. As bits and bodies meld and as human flesh become permanently entwined with hardware.”
This paper published in IEEE Internet Computing presents research innovation that addresses advances in this evolving paradigm of Internet of Bodies and Internet of Sports. The paper informed that “as healthcare solutions and augmented monitoring of human mobility overlap with the new concepts of the Internet of Things.”
This paper on the Wiley Online Library, titled “From the Internet of Things toward the Internet of bodies: Ethical and Legal Considerations”, highlights that “the proliferation of the Internet of Things makes the grey area of ethics darker and lighter simultaneously, and the law is currently not construed to accompany the steady progression toward the Internet of Bodies. The future calls for a balance between divergent interests of appealing technological progress and vital human safety.”
According to this paper, “the Internet of Things is challenging the traditional construct of ownership, and users are progressively losing control over their IoT devices. The Internet of Bodies is the awaiting new normal where human bodies and minds form a connected network pervaded by the Internet. The integrity of human bodies will rely more and more on the Internet.”
This paper in IEEE Internet of Things Journal points out that “The Internet of Bodies is an imminent extension to the vast Internet of Things domain, where interconnected devices (e.g., worn, implanted, embedded, swallowed, etc.) located in-on-and-around the human body form a network. Thus, the IoB can enable a myriad of services and applications for a wide range of sectors, including medicine, safety, security, wellness, and entertainment.”
The paper asserts that “considering the recent health and economic crisis caused by COVID-19, the IoB can revolutionize today’s public health and safety infrastructure. Nonetheless, reaping the full benefit of IoB is still subject to addressing related risks, concerns, and challenges.”
The paper presents “a systematic survey of channel modelling issues for various link types of human body communication channels below 100 MHz, the narrowband channels between 400 MHz and 2.5 GHz, and ultra-wideband (channels from 3 to 10 GHz).”
This paper titled The Internet of bodies: life and death in the age of AI warns us that “the Internet of Bodies exposes us to unprecedented privacy and cybersecurity vulnerability introducing conflict across regulatory regimes. Thus, societies must open a dialogue to start identifying human value.”
This paper on Springer points out that “via the Internet of Bodies, our physical and virtual worlds are blending and shifting”. It discusses three areas: “1) our identities are diversifying, as they become hyper-enhanced and multi-sensory; 2) our collaborations are co-created, immersive and connected; 3) our innovations are diverse and inclusive. It is proposed that our bodies have finally become the interface.”
The title of this article asks a powerful question, and the subtitle explains the valid concerns: “The ‘Internet of Bodies’ Is Here. Are Courts and Regulators Ready? A network of intelligent devices attached to or implanted in bodies raises a host of legal and policy questions.”
The paper points out that “the US FDA is responsible for ensuring that medical implants are safe, but the FDA deemed healthy-lifestyle IoB devices such as fitness trackers to generally fall outside the agency’s purview. So under the FDA’s current approach, some IoB devices wouldn’t necessarily have to meet the more stringent safety standards though they would be subject to federal product-safety and unfair-trade-practices laws like any other electronic device.”
This paper “designs a physiological state monitoring system by arranging wearable devices and sensors on athletes to collect physiological parameters and monitor their status. The physiological signals, such as electrocardiogram heart rate and body temperature, are transmitted via the Internet of Bodies to analyze the physiological status further. Before a sudden accident occurs, an alarm or warning is sent out. Thus, the coach can interrupt the sports training to avoid further damage on the athletes.”
According to this paper, “the Internet of bodies is the imminent development of the field of digitization of the human body on a large scale, is the inevitable future of technology at this moment. Instead of devices connected to the Internet, human bodies can be connected to a network, with the potential to be controlled and monitored remotely. These devices can provide information to the carrier in two ways: it can present the image in a discreet manner, or can take into account the gestures made by the owner, accepting the communication between himself and the other person.”
For the life-changing and life-saving potential of IoB, this paper suggests “thinking about smart pills transmitting information from inside our body; smart beds that can track our heart rate and breathing, smart clothes can sense our body temperature and adjust our smart thermostat, and smart toilets for the long-term analysis of a faeces.” The paper also features Tamara Banbury describing herself as a voluntary cyborg.
However, the paper, asking the question of “Are We Ready for the Internet of Bodies?” also points out that “there are dangers of the Internet of Bodies, pointing out “any device can be hacked, including one inside the human body. We need to really think through the privacy and security implications of devices that live with us. But the researchers also highlighted the life-changing, life-saving potential of technologies that know us inside and out.”
This recent paper speculates cybernetic cities in a posthuman era and proposes a design of the Internet of Bodies that interestingly uses the transhumanism concept interchangeably with techno-humanism. The researchers illustrate the experimental results through the lens of probable outcomes as a result of co-opting and co-designing the homogeneous evolution of IoT and IoB in future smart cities.
This position paper, sub-titled The Human Body as an Efficient and Secure Wireless Channel, aims to “provide a glimpse into the opportunities created by implantable, injectable, indigestible, and wearable IoB devices”. It starts with a discussion of application-specific design goals, technical challenges, and enabling of communication standards.
The paper discusses the reason that the highly radiative nature of radio frequency systems results in inefficient systems due to over-extended coverage that causes interference and becomes susceptible to eavesdropping. Body channel communication in the paper presents an attractive, alternative wireless technology by inherently coupling signals to the human body, resulting in highly secure and efficient communications.”
This technical paper highlights that “even though on-body IoB communications are required to occur within very close proximity of the human body, on-body wireless radio frequency IoB devices unnecessarily extend the coverage range beyond the human body due to their radiative nature. This eventually reduces energy efficiency, causes co-existence and interference issues, and exposes sensitive personal data to security threats.”
Related to the Internet of Bodies, another term for IoB is the Internet of Behavior. Unfortunately, upon searching the technical literature, I found only one academic paper about the Internet of behavior. In addition, Gartner mentioned the Internet of Behaviour in the 2021 Technology Trends report as an emerging technology.
According to this paper, “Internet of Behaviour (IoB) aims to discuss how data are better understood and used to construct and promote new products from the viewpoint of human psychology. The IoB can be used in a multitude of ways by public or private entities. This technology will become a compelling new marketing and distribution platform for companies and organizations worldwide.”
Finally, I want to finish the review with the questions of literary critic David Wills in this book: “Where does my body begin? Where does it end? What is inside my body? What is outside? What is primary? What is secondary? What is natural? What is artificial? What is original? What is supplemental?”
Conclusions
The serious question is whether we are ready for using IoB. In my opinion, we are not even close to being prepared. Considering the uncertainty and scary growth of the Internet, sharing the information of our bodies can be a stupid decision.
It will be great that digital pills will tell doctors when we have taken our medicine, digital diapers alert parents when their babies need to be changed in a safer ecosystem. But the Internet is not ready for this kind of sensitive information.
Until double-blind clinical studies in real-life and in integrated environments are conducted, clear definitions from standards institutes are provided, ethical clearance and tight regulations are maintained, IoB will stay as an interesting idea.
With these fundamental measures, we might still not eliminate all risks, but at least we can keep them under control and mitigate them as we learn more. However, without these fundamentals, considering IoB in real-life resembles jumping into a vast ocean without knowing how to swim.
As an optimist, Ghislaine Boddington draws a beautiful picture of IoB in a Ted Talk. Society for Arts and Technology granted her the IX Immersion Experience Visionary Pioneer Award for her long-term innovative work in digital arts. She is passionate about embodied intelligence, as highlighted in this TED Talk titled Future Love: The Internet of Bodies in 2016. I wish the world were as safe and reliable as Ghislaine imagined in this talk.
Biotechnology has made remarkable improvements in healthcare and genetics areas. Some health care devices are safely using them for patients by medical professionals using secure channels. However, using these devices on the Internet is not as easy as we use them offline. Besides, all technology devices, including artificial intelligence ones, are prone to human errors even if we build them well.
I leave you with this short video presented by The RAND Corporation on YouTube.
Thank you for reading my perspectives.
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