My journey to becoming a cyborg began in the basement of an unassuming brown house, not far from the Pittsburgh airport. In February, I spent a day in the makeshift laboratory and headquarters of biohacking collective Grindhouse Wetware. Here, engineer Tim Cannon leads a crew of youngish technologists who call themselves “grinders.”

Grinders are the maker-punks of the emerging Transhumanist movement. They are self-identified citizen scientists with a DIY ethos who are attempting to push the limits of human enhancement -- in this case, by implanting electronics (such as chips, magnets, small computers and LED lights) into their bodies.

I had come to get a small magnet surgically implanted into the ring finger of my left hand. I had read about magnets and was writing a story about grinder culture. I felt I couldn’t fully understand the sensation of the magnet unless I got one myself.

Although there is no official count of people who have implants, DIY surgery is far from mainstream. But it’s not exactly in the shadows, either. Grindhouse Wetware is one of a handful of American biohacking collectives, and similar groups have also cropped up in Europe and Asia. Conservative estimates by biohackers put the number of people with implants in the thousands — maybe as many as 10,000 — globally.

So while kids aren’t lining up at Hot Topic to get implanted, the trend is catching fire.

An X-ray of the author's hand after her magnet was implanted (Alex Pearlman)

The implant was an experiment I had hoped to participate in for a long time, something I had been curious about since I first heard that a magnet could give a human a sixth sense -- the ability to physically feel electromagnetism.

I decided I had to get it done myself if I ever hoped to adequately describe it to others. I flew to Pittsburgh to meet Cannon and his team, including Zack Watson, a body modification specialist who performed the implant in his studio on Pittsburgh’s South Side.

Implants are dangerous. They are not approved by any medical authority, and doctors refuse to perform implants because, unlike pacemakers or artificial hips, implanted electronics violate the Hippocratic Oath -- grinders implant magnets for the sake of augmentation and enhancement. They have no proven health benefits and could result in unnecessary harm. They are also widely illegal in many states, including in Massachusetts.

Better ethical regulations would keep people safer, and biohackers agree. They believe regulation would reduce risk by requiring medical professionals to perform medical procedures, such as implantation.

Dr. Deb Chachra, a biomedical engineering professor at Olin College, has been an avid observer of grinder culture since the 1990s, when tattoos, piercings and body modification became mainstream fascinations. In an essay on her blog, Chachra compared the issues around implant regulation to those surrounding cosmetic breast augmentation in the 1980s. Initially, cosmetic implants were forbidden because they served no medical purpose and could be dangerous.