• Dean Kamen’s “Luke arm” prosthetic uses muscle-actuated control and balloon-based haptic feedback rather than direct neural interfaces, though it can integrate Kuiken’s nerve-stub re-routing for additional input modalities.

• Participants floated the radical idea of growing human brains around implanted chips during embryogenesis to create seamless brain–computer interfaces, while acknowledging unknown developmental risks.

• SQUID sensors were highlighted for enabling ultra-low-field NMR and fMRI at Earth’s ambient magnetic field, offering high temporal resolution but limited spatial resolution for single-neuron mapping.

• A “retarded polymerase” concept was proposed: a light-activated DNA polymerase that could be laser- or LED-controlled to start/stop synthesis and choose nucleotide incorporation, aiming for self-replicating DNA synthesis systems.

• Closure engineering—the requirement that a self-replicating system must manufacture all of its own components—was contrasted with ad-hoc Lego or RepRap-style assemblers, prompting debate over phased NASA-style roadmaps for achieving full material closure.

• Electron-beam melting (EBM) was proposed as a replication technology: an EBM machine could print its own metal casing and most components, plus parts for an electron-beam assembler, potentially creating a closed-loop fabrication chain.

• Practical biohacking tools discussed include maskless lithography with DMD chips for DNA array synthesis, open-source 3-D printers, and Lego-based rapid-prototyping experiments.

• Stephen Wolfram’s “A New Kind of Science” (freely available online) was praised for its computational-universe perspective, with participants contrasting traditional mathematical modeling with Wolfram’s cellular-automata-based view of complex systems.