Defining the term as “anyone with a permanently implanted device with electronic components, and/or mechanical moving parts.”
So, I’m not counting surgical pins and plates, but cochlear implants and pacemakers are in. And I guess I’ll make allowances to devices implanted as a bridge to transplant—ventricular assist devices, for example—but entirely external devices like dialysis machines are out.
And, technically, anyone with such a device implanted for non-medical reasons would count, too. That might cover a couple of eccentric transhumanism researchers and dedicated body-modification artistes.
There doesn’t seem to be any ready-made lists of statistics on this particular subject—the nih.gov site keeps giving me funny looks—so, what the heck. 'Anyone willing or able to weigh in on this one?
Hey, I’ve got a titanium cage on my spine and I count myself as a proud member of the cyborg community.
You’re in big trouble now, buddy. I’m going to make this viral and call down a march on you. A stiff and halting march, maybe, but indomitable and unstoppable.
I assume that joint-replacement surgeries involve “mechanical moving parts”, and knee and hip replacements between them account for a bit over a million people. I suspect that most other cyborgifications will be dwarfed by those two, which would put the total at perhaps a million and a half.
It seems we have a couple hundred million people with the TV-implanted intelligence cut-out circuit. It got installed there electronically, but didn’t leave any parts behind other than rewired neurons. So I’m not sure that *quite *counts for the OP.
