With rapidly advancing robotics, internet-connected devices and AI, we’re probably on the cusp of a surge of body-augmentation technologies. On top of this, there’s a thriving (if slightly fringe) body-hacking communityof people intent on implanting themselves with everything from magnets to RFID chips and more. And Elon Musk’s company Neuralink is working hard on developing brain-computer interfaces that mimic the neural lace technology in Iain M. We’re already used to highly sophisticated prosthetics, and implanted devices like defibrillators. And while we may be decades away from the tech in this beautiful Anime movie, it hints strongly at what’s to come. The question is, when they do, who gets the first 3D printed replacement kidneys?įorget the “ghost” of a movie-remake of Ghost in the Shellthat came out in 2017 - in contrast, the original Ghost is a masterpiece of meditation around what it means to be human in an age of body augmentation. Reflecting this, the goal of the company Prellis Biologics is to 3D print the “entire vasculature of a human kidney in twelve hours or less” - and they are well on the way of achieving this.

And just in the past year or so, they’ve started to radically increase the speed and sophistication of these techniques - to the point where it may be possible to get 3D printed replacement bones, skin, and vital organs within the next few years.

For a number of years now, scientists have been developing 3D printers capable of producing facsimiles of human body parts, by printing with a combination of cell-containing “bio-inks” and biocompatible support materials.

Yet there are surprising parallels between the seemingly-miraculous medical pods in the movie that the rich use to keep themselves disease-free, and the emerging field of bioprinting. And perhaps because this is a movie with a deeply social message, the validity of the science in it leaves a little to be desired. Elysium is a movie that takes itself very seriously - almost too seriously - as it preaches about the evils of the “1%” having too much power over the “99%”.

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