I'd need to completely own it. I don't want my extended memory storage to now also include product placement in my childhood memories or the cops can make my bionic legs stop working or whatever.

However, in the hypothetical situation where I completely own my augmentations, 100% I'm getting enhancements. In fact I would question the efficiency of giving me implants, it might just be easier to copy my brain into a completely robotic body.

Lotsa old people get hip replacements.

Stick to mechanical stuff that cant become enshittified later.

Is the hardware and software open source or otherwise not owned by a corporation. Then maybe.

No.

I've seen how often tech breaks, gets controlled, becomes unsupported, and can never really get things "right."

But like you said, if it's that or blindness, sure. But I'm not chopping off good parts.

I would need a few things met:

• No data flow back to my brain
• Open source
• Not flagged as disallowed by TSA
• Programmable (kind of goes with OSS)
• Actually useful
• Extremely minimal maintenance

If all of these were met, HEEELLLL YEA

My father ran a prosthetics clinic for 35 years. Before that he worked for his father doing very much the same thing for a decade prior.

His words of wisdom were, "The real thing is always better because you can feel with it."

We may be able to make materials that far exceed the capabilities of the human body, but until you can wire up every single nerve and use the thing exactly like you would a real limb, prosthetics will ALWAYS be lesser, no matter their capabilities. There's no point in having sword arms if you can't be proficient overnight with swinging a blade with your elbow.

But, in good faith, yeah, I'd gladly swap my eyes for something better. Astigmatism sucks, and I'm damn near legally blind as it is. Not having to wear glasses would be amazing. Gimme some Kiroshi Optics any day! But, the only reason I'd want them is because they'd be better than what I have. Wearing glasses isn't a huge deal.

Yes, to solve a medical issue or to genuinely improve my existence.

But if we're talking about something really advanced with software in it I need open source. I've already read real news articles about ocular implants where the company that supports them went out of business. Second Sight Medical Products.

I can't imagine what it must be like to have an implant in my body that's been bricked due to some corporate bullshit.

It depends.

If it is somehow able to be powered by the sugars in my body, doesn't need external recharging, and does not have any network connectivity, especially if it's an upgrade to what I currently have, probably.

If it fails any of those three tests, then probably not.

Not unless it was medically necessary, and they had open hardware and software for the parts. Otherwise, I don't trust companies and the US government to properly regulate it, and I really don't feel like having to play whack-a-mole with adblockers or whatever to keep my cybernetic parts from beaming ads straight into my brain, or doing other crazy stuff. I'd also be wary of companies just discontinuing support for the implants when it became too expensive for them to maintain, and being left with a useless bunch of metal somewhere in my body.

For Funsies? Likely not, no.

For medical reasons like steering a prostetic, yeah, maybe.

I used to be really deep into this rabbit hole. Theres a community of "biohackers" who do stuff like inserting rfid chips and magnets under the skin.

The magnet in the finger tip is what always interested me, but im too much of a chicken to seriously consider doing it because its not a medical procedure (you can't just go to a doctor afaia and request to have it implanted - theyll just refuse to do it) so you need to do it with local anaesthetics that you can legally acquire, yourself or with a friend.

People who have done it have reported they became able to sense electromagnetic fields once they got used to its sensitivity, which is bizarre and awesome at the same time. They literally gave themselves a "sixth sense"

Someone hasn't played the Deus Ex series...

No. Restoring human-like capability following some kind of traumatic event, sure.

"Nothing voluntary" and "nothing that grants superhuman abilities" are the bare minimum to make sure it doesn't turn into an arms race, leading to a tiered society with the enhanced elite ruling over the organic poor.

As long as it doesn't require a fucking WiFi connection and corporate account to use.

Im not against it, but im not rushing out to get them or anything.

Yes. But it must be superior to human flesh in every way, we have to have solved rejection, and for limbs, they need to be able to still have a sense of touch. Then I'd like to have a whole closet full of shells I can change daily, like Ghost in the Shell.

Yes, just seeing the headline was a yes - but yeah nothing for the brain, just robot arms and legs and eyes for now

Yes, if they're not owned and controlled by some corporate entity.

Considering how unlikely that is, I'll probably never get cybernetic implants.

Only if they're open source, and even then its a big if.

It would need to have a firewall, only allowing outgoing requests

I mean, technically, I already have one. My heart keeps stopping so I have a loop recorder implant that talks to my phone and reports back to my cardiologists.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/implantable-loop-recorder/about/pac-20579708

Only if I can control the implementation, which means open source and selfhosted uplink

Heavily depends on what they do, how reliable the tech is at the time, and who makes them, realistically for anything that I expect to actually become available in my lifetime, the answer is probably not

As a general concept, Im quite favorable towards the notion of using technology to change the human condition (Id consider myself a transhumanist), but that assumes a given change is both desirable and significant enough to be worth the personal risks (for example, of surgery), and I cant think of much that any relatively near future cybernetic implant would be likely able to do that would actually be a meaningful improvement. Restoring lost function is one thing, but at the moment I dont have any personal need for that. Most ideas Ive seen suggested beyond that boil down to "using your brain to control a computer", which well, is something your brain can already do, its just using your hands and senses in combination with traditional input and output devices to do it.

There are hypothetical things that one could imagine an implant doing that would interest me, for example, one could picture something that could add visual information of parts of the light spectrum one cannot currently see, or additional appendages beyond the natural number (maybe that goes beyond a simple implant though), or even more speculatively, one could picture some implant containing clusters of real or simulated neurons that can be trained to add additional capacity to the brain in some way. But, so far as I can see, nothing like that is realistically going to exist for quite a long time, and I would be extremely skeptical of anyone claiming otherwise, because modern technology companies love to sell hype.

Theres also the consideration that, well, you would need to really trust the manufacturer, programmer etc of any such device, the more so the more invasive it is and the more you anticipate relying on it if it is useful, and I would not trust, well, any manufacturer operating under the current economic model that would actually have the resources to develop and test such a device. For anything you incorporate into yourself like that, robustness, available maintenance and personal control over all aspects of the device are paramount, and those things are not the things that let a technology company maximize their profits.

Nice try, Sarif Industries. I've played some Deus Ex, I know how this goes.

I've been fixing machines long enough to know I don't want to. Flesh is weak, but flesh adapts. It also doesn't get an internet connection, which means I get to sleep at night.

Edit: Thought about this a little more. I think a better frame for this question is whether or not you're comfortable accepting the flaws and limitations inherent in our bodies as they are. Obviously I, as an able-bodied person, am more comfortable accepting that my body isn't perfect. Someone with significant disabilities wouldn't hesitate to fix what causes them pain, discomfort, or applies cruel limits to the life they want to live.

I can accept that other people would choose to change, and their reasons are their own. I have no right to force them to accept a body that they hate, for the same reason no one should force me to accept a body that I hate. The Deaf community has had years and years to debate the ethics of cochlear implants, and their impact on their community's cultural values. I'm not Deaf, just a little HoH, but I try to pay attention to what they're talking about for reasons like this.

But as a trans person, I can accept that my body isn't ideal. There are things I would happily change, for the sake of personal comfort. But having put a great deal of thought into it, I would be much happier to live in a society that understood and respected how I perceive myself, and how I want to be perceived. It would render the desire for those aesthetic changes a point of preference, rather than emotional necessity. An accepting culture has been better for my dysphoria than an acceptable body.

It is a complicated philosophical question. I think the right answer is that people should have the freedom to make that choice, and it shouldn't be mandatory, dangerous, or open a path to exploitation.

If you're going to trust a corporation to casually touch your brain, you're not using it, so you should do it!

As much as the weakness of flesh disgusts me, I wouldn't touch cybernetics with a ten foot pole, unless they corrected a major disability/were lifesaving.

Absolutely not

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60416058

These people permanently changed their bodies in ways that will have lifelong impacts (as one example they can never have an MRI) just to be abandoned.

Yes, I would; but not with any of the corperations that exist now. You have to be picky about what kind of IP/hardware you put into your body. Id also never get a v1 product if I could help it.

Lotta badasses in here who would never compromise on their ideals of software purity.

That is, until the very moment they became disabled or unhealthy in a way that an implant with proprietary blobs can fix..

I really wonder about the blindness one. Cameras are simple now, we just need a way to feed the information into the brain. It doesn't need to be anything as fancy as an eyeball, just glasses with a camera.

Only if the software stack was GPLv3 licensed (or whichever was the most aggressive version of the license) and the computational hardware was reasonably open as well, preferably completely open like RISC and maybe a fully open UEFI.

I need to trust anything that is going to become part of me.

New Chrome? Well Cyberpunk made it seem fun, but in reality you'd get so many ads...

I don't trust companies to even give me usable software anymore, let alone functioning hardware.

they have no business touching any human in a medical sense.... HELL NO

I wouldn't want them. Too much that can go wrong.

No, because then it'd be like in the Genetic Opera where we don't own the parts we need to keep us alive. We'd have to pay those too, in absurd amounts. And if we don't, we'll just die. It's already looking like that anyways with the "Pay or Die" system we have in healthcare.

You mean like the useful type we see in Ghost in the Shell or the shitty type that we'll see IRL?