Not against it on principle, but there's no way I'd get it knowing about the way the corporations that have the resources to make it happen operate.
There are a lot of different human faculties that can be augmented!
We augment our senses every day with tools like microphones, microscopes, radio, radar, telescopes, X-rays, cameras, etc.
And when our senses fail us, we augment them with eyeglasses, hearing aids, and so on.
We augment our legs with bicycles, skateboards, cars, airplanes, etc.
And when our legs fail us, we augment them with braces, crutches, wheelchairs, electric scooters, walkers, etc.
We augment our memory retrieval with writing, library science, search engines, and regular expressions.
We augment our ability to measure lengths with rulers, measuring-tapes, and surveying equipment.
We augment our immune systems with masks, rubber gloves, antiseptics, antibiotics, cancer therapies, water treatment, etc.
We augment our sexual functions with erotic stories and art, contraceptives, lubricants, sex toys, dating apps, etc.
We augment our metabolic function with cooking, fermentation, agriculture, selective breeding of crop species, etc.
We augment our musical abilities with horns, percussion, strings, synthesizers, and more.
It turns out that augmenting human ability is itself a core human ability.
I see, nature made us to be cyborgs
Many of us are already cyborgs. I have a continuous glocuse monitoring system and an insulin pump, I choose to believe this will give me dual citizenship if there is a robot apocalypse.
Smart! snorts line of pixy stix
We call it "tool use" and "medicine" and "literacy" and "science" and "accessibility" and "culture"
I know too many devs to have my body require a firmware update.
There are folks who are facing their hardware provider going out of business and just hoping their eyes don't quit working.
Just a security concern. Augmenting is great but we don't want the augmentations to become a liability. Obviously there are exceptions to every rule, if we invent a robotic arm replacement for someone who's lost one, the security concerns are generally lower than the quality of life improvement of having a functioning arm 99% of the time, and there's an argument for the potential ability for rapid detachment in case of emergency, but once we get into subdermal and brain implants, we're in a territory where these things can't be easily removed in case of emergency, and the risks get immense.
Whatever improves your quality of life I’m all for.
The flesh is weak. Only the machine is eternal.
There is no certainty in flesh except death.
Its a good thing? Prosthetics really help disabled people.
From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel; I aspired to the purity of the blessed machine.
Your kind cling to your flesh, as if it will not decay and fail you. One day, that crude biomass you call a temple will wither, and you will beg my kind to save you.
But I am already saved.
For the machine is immortal.
Even in death I serve the Omnissiah
I am not looking forward to having my eyes scooped out for a second time because the company providing bionic vision went out of business.
I work as a surgical tech for a living, so obvious bias on modifying the body - making that shit happen is my job! The medical applications are pretty wild - we can replace worn down bones with titanium replacements, or stick a diode in you and makes your heart beat at a specific rate, or replace the chambers in your dick with a manually filled balloon if you can't get it up anymore (legit, it's a thing [SFW - seriously]).
Guessing OP is more directed at non-medical applications; we (society in general) already mostly accept that on an aesthetic front - piercings, tattoos, etc, but we've only scratched the surface functionally.
You might be interested in the concept of "transhumanism" which is kinda the more sci-fi flavor of augmentation, but the better our tech gets, the less 'fi' it is.
Lots of cool ideas, like eye lens prosthetics capable of slapping a HUD on your field of view, or being able to chemically or electrically stimulate a specific part of the brain to pump up your alertness or w/e... how often those ideas manifest as an actual product, eh, mixed results (looking at Musk's disastrous neurolink garbage).
There's also simpler stuff - I saw a documentary on this stuff years ago, and one of the cool examples was a guy that got tiny little rare-earth magnets - little 1mm balls or thereabouts. Dude cut the ends of his fingers all the way down to muscle, and implanted a magnet ball into each one, sewed back up, and let them heal. So, now he can pick up ferrous objections with a poke; and cooler than that, unexpected result was he how has a sense of magnetism! Any time he entered a magnetic field, he could feel feedback from the implants, so he could tell the strength and polarity just by moving his hand through it. And apparently some things generate a magnetic field that you wouldn't expect - like he noticed feedback when he was cooking on the stove from those those heat coils: when it was on / hot it would move the implants slightly, so he had an extra layer of warning for things like when a coil is hot enough to burn skin but not quite 'red hot' because the magnetic feedback was more noticeable than the actual heat it was putting off.
I'm all for the concept. Definitely wouldn't recommend a DIY surgery like some of those folks do, but I could definitely see something like non-medical body mod clinics popping up the same way we have tattoo parlors now.
I really want the magic ring so I can badge in and out of the office
On a post talking about modifying the body, you say you want a magic ring? Do I dare open the link? :o
haha its an actual ring, but the site is mostly things like magnets you can stab into your finger and things like that, nothing graphic on the site from what Ive seen
I can't imagine a faster way to dystopia. You'd be literally incapable of disobedience.
Depends on the implant. I have to imagine the only way this kind of thing could be adopted mainstream is for it to be open source, the risks are just too high to let some random company put obfuscated proprietary tech in your brain
I'm all for it, things like cochlear implants have already been improving lives for decades.
I would say "i never asked for this", but actually i did.
This sparks joy: Augmentation to help people become the selves that they would truly like to be.
This does not: Some kind of transhuman singularity dystopia where we have replaced ourselves not out of a soul-driven yearning for our true self, but in service of a cold, quantitative utilitarian calculus that says we must shed our skin because it is logically inferior.
Both. Everyone is afraid of AI taking over but it's just a tool. Human augmentation is way more likely to lead there. But in the mean time, Stephen Hawking lived quite a while only being able to speak with augmentations. Just like any other technology, it will be at the very least researched in fear that someone else will first. So might as well embrace it
I'm not afraid of AI taking over. I'm afraid of the TESCREAL suicide cult that wants AI to take over. If they are the ones who ultimately push a singularity button, because they believe it's a moral imperative to push the singularity button, we're going to have a really shitty rapture.
I'm currently wearing a continuous glucose monitor. Does that count? I'm all for anything voluntary especially if it improves quality of life without impeding on others.
I didn't ask for this. - Adam Jenson
I am in favour of transhumanism, but I would only want a neural implant if it's fully open source and not connected to the cloud. It also must not break the skin, because I don't want infections, especially near my brain.
I think it'll be cool in like, 50 years once the technology is there. Right now all it does is kill monkeys.
I prefer my humans segmented into highest $$$ parts thank you.
Natural will always feel better, but I wouldn't complain either way
I read this and thought: if someone wants a boob job: okie.
I like big butts and I cannot lie
Cool for people with disabilities or medical needs. But otherwise I'm not a fan of purely cosmetic/cyberpunk/silicon valley style augmentation.
Your/my body, your/my choice. People need to stop judging/comparing themselves or try to stop bodily autonomy choices on other's behalf.
Or to be trite, to each their own. What he/she/it/they do with their bodies is this own violation.
It's totally anyone's choice, but it makes me sad that some people are so unhappy with their bodies and i think it often has much more to do with meeting a stereotype or perceived norm or beauty than with the actual body. Obviously many people have serious issues that impair function and the opportunity to increase independence is huge. For those who are chasing something else, that may be more internal than external, what happens when they augment and have the same (or more) problems?
I don't care what other people choose to do with/to their own bodies. It's none of my business, at all, ever.
For myself, I'm not sure. I don't have the means, so it's irrelevant, but if I did... I don't know. I don't have any issue with it really, but it doesn't particularly appeal to me either. I can of course see advantages to overcoming the limitations of a natural body, but for whatever reason, I've never been much for pursuing fulfillment by acquiring things (which is pretty much what augmentation boils down to). It just seems to be too much hassle for too little gain, and particularly since the acquisition of things never leads to real fulfillment anyway - it just fuels the desire to acquire even more things.
Most likely, given the choice, I'd choose to just continue to inhabit my natural, unaugmented shell. But I really don't know.
I can't boil augmentation down to materialism. Think further than chopping off your limbs and replacing them with sweet robot arms, you'll find a world of questions that are hard to answer and put you face to face with what it means to be human - something we are often too comfortable in our daily lives to do.
Too little to gain? There is everything to gain. Human capability is what brought us this magic rock in our hands that we poke to operate every part of our lives from finances to relationships to shopping and we use it to communicate with the world. With the internet, cheap mobile phones, and wireless tech, humanity has given itself a global consciousness through sheer ingenuity and genius, and now we're on the precipice of the AI age. Significantly enhancing human capability isn't mind blowing to you? It's just materialism? The good and bad that may come from augmentation... It's overwhelming, honestly.
Well... yes. I don't see it as much more than simple materialism simply because I don't think that humanity in general is anything close to equipped to make much more of it.
With the internet, cheap mobile phones, and wireless tech, humanity has given itself a global consciousness
Yes, and that global consciousness has revealed itself to be to some significant degree petty, ignorant, self-absorbed and mean-spirited.
I think that at this point in time, humanity is far more in need of philosophical and sociological advancement than technological.
I'll stand by my original point, but I do agree that the global consciousness is everything you stated. It's also young. It skews hard toward the younger generation who grew up with it currently. Very interested to see what it's like in the future when everyone uses it grew up with it. Probably still shit TBH - humanity really sucks ass in a lot of ways - but I do think it will mature somewhat.
I'll also agree that we are in desperate need of philosophical and sociological advancement. I think it's important to keep in mind they're not mutually exclusive; we can and are working on both at the same time, and technological advancement can help or eliminate issues in the other areas mentioned.
You can't stop progress. And we shouldn't try to. We do need to address serious, solvable social issues in the world though, and technology can and has facilitated that in the past. Medicine is technology, remember. Humanity is absolutely equipped to make much use of augmentation, but I will not pretend there are no downsides. The tech will be used for both good and evil and that's just nature. In all things, balance.
Conceptually? I'm all for it. Why wouldn't I be.
In practice, we live in a capitalist society and I don't want an arm that makes me watch an advertisement before I open a bag of chips.
All right, you get the chip opening for free, but masturbation requires a paid subscription
And practice on a hotdog first or you’ll tear it right off/start a bushfire.
Wow, I literally have nothing to add to that. Well done.
Too real man
Not against it on principle, but there's no way I'd get it knowing about the way the corporations that have the resources to make it happen operate.
There are a lot of different human faculties that can be augmented!
We augment our senses every day with tools like microphones, microscopes, radio, radar, telescopes, X-rays, cameras, etc.
And when our senses fail us, we augment them with eyeglasses, hearing aids, and so on.
We augment our legs with bicycles, skateboards, cars, airplanes, etc.
And when our legs fail us, we augment them with braces, crutches, wheelchairs, electric scooters, walkers, etc.
We augment our memory retrieval with writing, library science, search engines, and regular expressions.
We augment our ability to measure lengths with rulers, measuring-tapes, and surveying equipment.
We augment our immune systems with masks, rubber gloves, antiseptics, antibiotics, cancer therapies, water treatment, etc.
We augment our sexual functions with erotic stories and art, contraceptives, lubricants, sex toys, dating apps, etc.
We augment our metabolic function with cooking, fermentation, agriculture, selective breeding of crop species, etc.
We augment our musical abilities with horns, percussion, strings, synthesizers, and more.
It turns out that augmenting human ability is itself a core human ability.
I see, nature made us to be cyborgs
Many of us are already cyborgs. I have a continuous glocuse monitoring system and an insulin pump, I choose to believe this will give me dual citizenship if there is a robot apocalypse.
Smart! snorts line of pixy stix
We call it "tool use" and "medicine" and "literacy" and "science" and "accessibility" and "culture"
I know too many devs to have my body require a firmware update.
There are folks who are facing their hardware provider going out of business and just hoping their eyes don't quit working.
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/18/bionic-eyes-go-dark/
As a already augmented human, i fully support this.
Glasses, portable electronic tether, surgery...........
Wearable > implantation
Just a security concern. Augmenting is great but we don't want the augmentations to become a liability. Obviously there are exceptions to every rule, if we invent a robotic arm replacement for someone who's lost one, the security concerns are generally lower than the quality of life improvement of having a functioning arm 99% of the time, and there's an argument for the potential ability for rapid detachment in case of emergency, but once we get into subdermal and brain implants, we're in a territory where these things can't be easily removed in case of emergency, and the risks get immense.
Whatever improves your quality of life I’m all for.
The flesh is weak. Only the machine is eternal.
There is no certainty in flesh except death.
Its a good thing? Prosthetics really help disabled people.
From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel; I aspired to the purity of the blessed machine.
Your kind cling to your flesh, as if it will not decay and fail you. One day, that crude biomass you call a temple will wither, and you will beg my kind to save you.
But I am already saved.
For the machine is immortal.
Even in death I serve the Omnissiah
I am not looking forward to having my eyes scooped out for a second time because the company providing bionic vision went out of business.
I work as a surgical tech for a living, so obvious bias on modifying the body - making that shit happen is my job! The medical applications are pretty wild - we can replace worn down bones with titanium replacements, or stick a diode in you and makes your heart beat at a specific rate, or replace the chambers in your dick with a manually filled balloon if you can't get it up anymore (legit, it's a thing [SFW - seriously]).
Guessing OP is more directed at non-medical applications; we (society in general) already mostly accept that on an aesthetic front - piercings, tattoos, etc, but we've only scratched the surface functionally.
You might be interested in the concept of "transhumanism" which is kinda the more sci-fi flavor of augmentation, but the better our tech gets, the less 'fi' it is.
Lots of cool ideas, like eye lens prosthetics capable of slapping a HUD on your field of view, or being able to chemically or electrically stimulate a specific part of the brain to pump up your alertness or w/e... how often those ideas manifest as an actual product, eh, mixed results (looking at Musk's disastrous neurolink garbage).
There's also simpler stuff - I saw a documentary on this stuff years ago, and one of the cool examples was a guy that got tiny little rare-earth magnets - little 1mm balls or thereabouts. Dude cut the ends of his fingers all the way down to muscle, and implanted a magnet ball into each one, sewed back up, and let them heal. So, now he can pick up ferrous objections with a poke; and cooler than that, unexpected result was he how has a sense of magnetism! Any time he entered a magnetic field, he could feel feedback from the implants, so he could tell the strength and polarity just by moving his hand through it. And apparently some things generate a magnetic field that you wouldn't expect - like he noticed feedback when he was cooking on the stove from those those heat coils: when it was on / hot it would move the implants slightly, so he had an extra layer of warning for things like when a coil is hot enough to burn skin but not quite 'red hot' because the magnetic feedback was more noticeable than the actual heat it was putting off.
I'm all for the concept. Definitely wouldn't recommend a DIY surgery like some of those folks do, but I could definitely see something like non-medical body mod clinics popping up the same way we have tattoo parlors now.
Pretty fascinating stuff!
https://dangerousthings.com/
I really want the magic ring so I can badge in and out of the office
On a post talking about modifying the body, you say you want a magic ring? Do I dare open the link? :o
haha its an actual ring, but the site is mostly things like magnets you can stab into your finger and things like that, nothing graphic on the site from what Ive seen
https://dangerousthings.com/product/magic-ring/
I can't imagine a faster way to dystopia. You'd be literally incapable of disobedience.
Depends on the implant. I have to imagine the only way this kind of thing could be adopted mainstream is for it to be open source, the risks are just too high to let some random company put obfuscated proprietary tech in your brain
I'm all for it, things like cochlear implants have already been improving lives for decades.
I would say "i never asked for this", but actually i did.
This sparks joy: Augmentation to help people become the selves that they would truly like to be.
This does not: Some kind of transhuman singularity dystopia where we have replaced ourselves not out of a soul-driven yearning for our true self, but in service of a cold, quantitative utilitarian calculus that says we must shed our skin because it is logically inferior.
Both. Everyone is afraid of AI taking over but it's just a tool. Human augmentation is way more likely to lead there. But in the mean time, Stephen Hawking lived quite a while only being able to speak with augmentations. Just like any other technology, it will be at the very least researched in fear that someone else will first. So might as well embrace it
I'm not afraid of AI taking over. I'm afraid of the TESCREAL suicide cult that wants AI to take over. If they are the ones who ultimately push a singularity button, because they believe it's a moral imperative to push the singularity button, we're going to have a really shitty rapture.
I'm currently wearing a continuous glucose monitor. Does that count? I'm all for anything voluntary especially if it improves quality of life without impeding on others.
I didn't ask for this. - Adam Jenson
I am in favour of transhumanism, but I would only want a neural implant if it's fully open source and not connected to the cloud. It also must not break the skin, because I don't want infections, especially near my brain.
I think it'll be cool in like, 50 years once the technology is there. Right now all it does is kill monkeys.
I prefer my humans segmented into highest $$$ parts thank you.
Natural will always feel better, but I wouldn't complain either way
I read this and thought: if someone wants a boob job: okie.
I like big butts and I cannot lie
Cool for people with disabilities or medical needs. But otherwise I'm not a fan of purely cosmetic/cyberpunk/silicon valley style augmentation.
Your/my body, your/my choice. People need to stop judging/comparing themselves or try to stop bodily autonomy choices on other's behalf.
Or to be trite, to each their own. What he/she/it/they do with their bodies is this own violation.
It's totally anyone's choice, but it makes me sad that some people are so unhappy with their bodies and i think it often has much more to do with meeting a stereotype or perceived norm or beauty than with the actual body. Obviously many people have serious issues that impair function and the opportunity to increase independence is huge. For those who are chasing something else, that may be more internal than external, what happens when they augment and have the same (or more) problems?
I don't care what other people choose to do with/to their own bodies. It's none of my business, at all, ever.
For myself, I'm not sure. I don't have the means, so it's irrelevant, but if I did... I don't know. I don't have any issue with it really, but it doesn't particularly appeal to me either. I can of course see advantages to overcoming the limitations of a natural body, but for whatever reason, I've never been much for pursuing fulfillment by acquiring things (which is pretty much what augmentation boils down to). It just seems to be too much hassle for too little gain, and particularly since the acquisition of things never leads to real fulfillment anyway - it just fuels the desire to acquire even more things.
Most likely, given the choice, I'd choose to just continue to inhabit my natural, unaugmented shell. But I really don't know.
I can't boil augmentation down to materialism. Think further than chopping off your limbs and replacing them with sweet robot arms, you'll find a world of questions that are hard to answer and put you face to face with what it means to be human - something we are often too comfortable in our daily lives to do.
Too little to gain? There is everything to gain. Human capability is what brought us this magic rock in our hands that we poke to operate every part of our lives from finances to relationships to shopping and we use it to communicate with the world. With the internet, cheap mobile phones, and wireless tech, humanity has given itself a global consciousness through sheer ingenuity and genius, and now we're on the precipice of the AI age. Significantly enhancing human capability isn't mind blowing to you? It's just materialism? The good and bad that may come from augmentation... It's overwhelming, honestly.
Well... yes. I don't see it as much more than simple materialism simply because I don't think that humanity in general is anything close to equipped to make much more of it.
Yes, and that global consciousness has revealed itself to be to some significant degree petty, ignorant, self-absorbed and mean-spirited.
I think that at this point in time, humanity is far more in need of philosophical and sociological advancement than technological.
I'll stand by my original point, but I do agree that the global consciousness is everything you stated. It's also young. It skews hard toward the younger generation who grew up with it currently. Very interested to see what it's like in the future when everyone uses it grew up with it. Probably still shit TBH - humanity really sucks ass in a lot of ways - but I do think it will mature somewhat.
I'll also agree that we are in desperate need of philosophical and sociological advancement. I think it's important to keep in mind they're not mutually exclusive; we can and are working on both at the same time, and technological advancement can help or eliminate issues in the other areas mentioned.
You can't stop progress. And we shouldn't try to. We do need to address serious, solvable social issues in the world though, and technology can and has facilitated that in the past. Medicine is technology, remember. Humanity is absolutely equipped to make much use of augmentation, but I will not pretend there are no downsides. The tech will be used for both good and evil and that's just nature. In all things, balance.
it's really sick
Good sick, right?
yes? sick as in slang for cool