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Okay folks, one of the questions we covered on the podcast awhile back.

In a decade or two when the option to intergrate technology into your body becomes a option would you be comfortable having technology implanted into your body to make it better?

Would you allow an artifical organ if you needed it?

A chip or something in your head so you could in some way communicate wirelessly?

Artificial limbs that allow you to greatly increase you nature strength?

Implants to increase you senses?

Personally so long as it is tested and found to be safe I would do pretty much anything that was offered. I do find the brain implants scary btu i figure if I dont do it, and others do... I'm just going to be left behind.

Like we covered in the podcast, I see most of this as inevitable; I'm sure some will object on religious grounds or what have you, but human enhancement is the future. Especially if we're going to continue our misguided research on artificial intelligence; humans will need an edge to avoid becoming obsolete.

I'd obviously want to replace my knees with cybernetic implants, and an artificial pancreas would be great (that one would possibly be the hardest organ to replace with a machine; cloning the organ seems like the better option), but I would seriously consider ocular implants and a cranial data storage device if they were advanced enough, and hardened against EMP. Artificial muscle fibers and some skeletal reinforcement would be great as well.

The big ethical problem, as I see it, then becomes access to this technology, much like other tech we increasingly rely on - if they begin to expect everyone to have instant recall of 100 terabytes of data, superhuman strength, and infrared vision, jobs will change accordingly. A whole group of non-enhanced people will become the new lower class (ala Gattica), and then we end up with a new civil rights struggle.

Yeah could be the case. I definatly see massive regulation around it. Or anti discrimination laws. Or maybe implants are job specific, and if you get job X they give you the required implants. Or mass production makes them so cheap almost anyone can get them.

I would fully embrace an artificial organ if:
1) I needed a replacement
2) the artificial ones were reliable enough to not give out in my likely lifetime
3) an acceptably compatible one was not available

3 is only if 2 isn't true. If they are going to work well enough, no sense worrying about natural or artificial.


I would not want a chip in my head for wireless communication. Don't see a need for it.

Stronger limbs, meh. Only if I needed it... maybe a new back though.

Sensory implants: eyes I would consider. My ears are fine and since I work with music I would worry that the sound would change. And I don't want to smell any more than I already can...

Most of it I wouldn't mind, save for any sort of wi-fi for my brain. That just freaks me the hell out.

I would be okay with cybernetic enhancements, but not replacements. i.e. I'd get a chip that allows me to access the internet via thought, but I wouldn't by choice amputate my arm to replace it with a cybernetic copy. If I was unfortunate enough to loose my arm, then I'd take the arm.

Cybernetic enhancement should be a method by which we enhance our lives in the future, not make us supermen for the fun of it.

Aww, but I wanna bend steel with my bare... actuators?

I wouldn't mind stuff to enhance my arms and legs, or heck. Gimme a lung that lets me breathe carbon monoxide.

I would love super sensors. Read a book from 100m away, see further spectrum's of color.

RK_Striker_JK_5 wrote: I wouldn't mind stuff to enhance my arms and legs, or heck. Gimme a lung that lets me breathe carbon monoxide.

Thats not so much a problem with our lungs but the way our cells make energy. Our cells (mitochondria specifically) produce energy using food, water, and oxygen, with CO2 as one of the wastes. Our cells cannot use the CO2 so a new lung won't help with that. For that, you would need chloroplasts (the plant version of mitochondria that produce energy from light, water and CO2).

I am perfectly happy with my Mk. 1 limbs. However if one of them should have to be replaced then I would like a limb that looks like a hand that doesn't look like a claw or a hand I stole from a store mannequin. Or a leg that looks like a car shock absorber.

Laser eyes would be cool.

McAvoy wrote:Laser eyes would be cool.

Just as long as you could turn them off right?

Funny question for me, because it's an issue of "I do" instead of "would I?" Every three days, I remove an implant on one side of abdomen and use a guide needle to implant a fresh one, which implant is attached via tubing to a device which computes and administers insulin dosage directly into my body without the need for me to inject. On the other side of my abdomen, I also implant via guide needle a sensor which connects to a transmitter which monitors levels and flux of glucose in my interstitial fluid and transmits those readings to the above-mentioned device. Finally my blood glucose meter communicates with the pump, and all of it uploads into a personalized tracking and data-analysis application.

Yes, I could as easily have just said "insulin pump with CGM," but the point is that we don't have to wait for the Jetsons to discuss things like this. I have a plug in my body through which a machine administers a necessary hormone of which my body is naturally deficient, AND I don't even have to wait for Laurence Fishburne to free me from the Matrix. My wife's grandmother is still kicking at the age of 97, thanks in large part to the cybernetic device with which she was implanted decades ago - namely, a cardiac pacemaker. The "cybernetic advancements" which I have are nearly as effective as a transplanted pancreas, are much more readily available, and have the added bonus of not being guaranteed to fail within three years and leave the patient back at square one - or forcing the recipient to take a huge daily cocktail of anti-rejection drugs which come with a host of nasty side-effects.

OK, ok, it's not a pair of laser eyes or parabolic microphones implanted in my ears... but if a cybernetic replacement pancreas became available, why would there be any question over its use any more than there is over my insulin pump and CGM - which is not treated any differently than any other therapeutic option?

stitch626 wrote:

RK_Striker_JK_5 wrote: I wouldn't mind stuff to enhance my arms and legs, or heck. Gimme a lung that lets me breathe carbon monoxide.

Thats not so much a problem with our lungs but the way our cells make energy. Our cells (mitochondria specifically) produce energy using food, water, and oxygen, with CO2 as one of the wastes. Our cells cannot use the CO2 so a new lung won't help with that. For that, you would need chloroplasts (the plant version of mitochondria that produce energy from light, water and CO2).

Killjoy. Okay, good point.

I would like to have an input mechanism for a computer controlled by thought or nerve impulse but I would decline to physically hybridize my brain.

The question really isn't can we or would we, we're already there. Insulin pumps, pacemakers, artificial joints, artificial limbs. We're already in the beginning stages of human/machine hybridization. We already have artificial lungs, hearts, kidneys, and other organs just that right now we haven't gotten them small enough to put into our bodies yet but there are people who's lives are entirely dependent upon machines doing the jobs their organs can't. When artificial organs are available people will use them. My perspective might be a bit blurred because the only reason I can still walk is that half my spine is stainless steel.

The question really is will people start to replace perfectly good functioning organs when the artificial ones start to exceed the performance of our natural ones. The answer to that is yes. My lungs work... sort of. However if you told me I could replace my asthmatic ones with a new set of artificial ones I'd do it. If my artificial ones can process oxygen better than my natural ones why wouldn't I? Hell, once you go artificial you can upgrade them later. Maybe someone will come up with lungs that automatically store an extra ten minutes of oxygen in them in case of emergencies. Eye sight? Yeah, they'll eventually make a replacement artificial eye. Shortly after that they'll make a set that are better than natural. Maybe with improved low light vision, or infrared. If they promised you 20/2 vision as good as a hawks, with better lowlight vision and a wider spectrum I can guarantee you people would have their perfectly good natural eyeballs plucked out and replaced with artificial ones.

Wiring my brain directly into the internet? Well, probably not, but in a couple generations people will probably think you a luddite for not being jacked in all the time.