A cyborg would be able to connect to Social Media and to his/her financial accounts and remotely controlled devices by brain computer interface. Such technology is not yet available.
A person who uses Internet almost all the time is not a cyborg. An unfortunate person who has computer implants for medical purposes is not a cyborg. Offenders who have chips implanted in their body are not cyborgs. These chips track the offenders and indicate when they are agitated.
I know it’s early in the thread…but I disagree with you exclusion of medical prostheses from cyborgery. I’m willing to put some limits, so that I can’t claim I’m a cyborg now, because of my eyeglasses. But someone with an artificial hip joint is a cyborg.
Anyway, pfah, addressing the issue, hell yes, and right now. I’ll gladly test prototypes. Being able to “download” a book rather than having to read it – yes!
(Well, just so long as I don’t lose the ability to read a book the old-fashioned way.)
I recently read Donald Kingsbury’s “Psychohistorical Crisis,” and much of the book revolved around people’s personal cognitive boosts, which not only stored a lot of data for you as external memory, but also helped you process data, making people a damn sight smarter. I want one!
Why are you limiting it to implanted interfaces? I’ve always wanted six super-strong arms and eyes in the back of my head. And some wings would be nice. Perhaps a prehensile tail. And downloadable memory.
I think it sounds cool superficially, buuuuuut ya know…
it would give a whole new spin to “upper respiratory viral infection”
also, this hypothetical
“Doctor, is merely meningitis or, or is he, has he, has he been infected with TROJANITIS?” dun dun duuuuuun
however a prosthetic for a missing limb or ocular, I guess as long as the plumbing is kept as simple and uncloggable as possible
Man made the buildings that reach for the sky
And Man made the motorcar and learned how to drive
But he didn’t make the flowers and he didn’t make the trees
And he didn’t make you and he didn’t make me
And he’s go no right to turn us into machines
– Ray Davies of The Kinks, “God’s Children”
Never but without the exclamation point. The internet/social-media/related things don’t interest me that much and I too much appreciate time totally away from them. Now give me a bionic arm and a couple mechanical organs and I would sign the paperwork tomorrow.
In this specific proposal for becoming a cyborg, it seems like I gain a marginal increase in convenience of access to the Internet, and I lose my ability for mental solitude.
Sorry, no. No upload for me - why would I want a computer program that acts as if it were me to be kept around? Will it be programmed to say “What?” and “I don’t understand” and “Where’s the tea?”
But I do believe that hands-free tech will advance to where implants are not needed, and the input interface will be more like a streamlined EEG electrode cap.
No thanks. I have never understood the desire for this. I love the internet, but I also love being away from the internet. I adore technology, but I also don’t trust the reliability of technology.
I would happily become a cyborg as long as nothing is lost – if the enhancements add and improve abilities, without taking anything away, then I’m all for it. If I loose some sort of sensation or feeling (for example – voluntarily replacing a hand with a super-strong robot hand that has limited feeling and sensation), then I would probably not want to do it.