this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
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Asklemmy

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[โ€“] Lanthanae@lemmy.blahaj.zone 89 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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.

[โ€“] andallthat@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

All right, you get the chip opening for free, but masturbation requires a paid subscription

[โ€“] joelfromaus@aussie.zone 6 points 1 year ago

And practice on a hotdog first or youโ€™ll tear it right off/start a bushfire.

[โ€“] cwagner@lemmy.cwagner.me 6 points 1 year ago

Not my issue. Mine is more that I don't want my arm to stop working because I updated too early and the maintainer missed a major issue ;) selfhosted crew checking in.

[โ€“] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 year ago

Wow, I literally have nothing to add to that. Well done.

[โ€“] dotslashme@infosec.pub 1 points 1 year ago

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.

[โ€“] fubo@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

[โ€“] PALONK0@lemmy.eco.br 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I see, nature made us to be cyborgs

[โ€“] AngryHumanoid@reddthat.com 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[โ€“] fubo@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

We call it "tool use" and "medicine" and "literacy" and "science" and "accessibility" and "culture"

[โ€“] ramble81@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I know too many devs to have my body require a firmware update.

[โ€“] jhulten@infosec.pub 11 points 1 year ago

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/

[โ€“] OprahsedCreature@lemmy.ml 20 points 1 year ago

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.

[โ€“] jet@hackertalks.com 20 points 1 year ago

As a already augmented human, i fully support this.

Glasses, portable electronic tether, surgery...........

[โ€“] Anissem@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 year ago

Whatever improves your quality of life Iโ€™m all for.

[โ€“] Blamemeta@lemm.ee 12 points 1 year ago

Its a good thing? Prosthetics really help disabled people.

[โ€“] queermunist@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The flesh is weak. Only the machine is eternal.

[โ€“] Ekis@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago

There is no certainty in flesh except death.

[โ€“] SkybreakerEngineer@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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

[โ€“] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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!

[โ€“] variants@possumpat.io 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

https://dangerousthings.com/

I really want the magic ring so I can badge in and out of the office

[โ€“] Tippon@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

On a post talking about modifying the body, you say you want a magic ring? Do I dare open the link? :o

[โ€“] variants@possumpat.io 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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/

[โ€“] 5ublimation@hexbear.net 9 points 1 year ago

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.

[โ€“] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I can't imagine a faster way to dystopia. You'd be literally incapable of disobedience.

[โ€“] flashgnash@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

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.

[โ€“] Vcio@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

I would say "i never asked for this", but actually i did.

[โ€“] kibiz0r@midwest.social 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[โ€“] Shikadi@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[โ€“] kibiz0r@midwest.social 2 points 1 year ago

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.

[โ€“] Rom@hexbear.net 3 points 1 year ago

I think it'll be cool in like, 50 years once the technology is there. Right now all it does is kill monkeys.

[โ€“] einlander@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I didn't ask for this. - Adam Jenson

[โ€“] s3rvant@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

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.

[โ€“] MrFunnyMoustache@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

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.

[โ€“] over_clox@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I prefer my humans segmented into highest $$$ parts thank you.

[โ€“] luthis@lemmy.nz 2 points 1 year ago

Natural will always feel better, but I wouldn't complain either way

[โ€“] aaaaaaadjsf@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Cool for people with disabilities or medical needs. But otherwise I'm not a fan of purely cosmetic/cyberpunk/silicon valley style augmentation.

[โ€“] cakeslayer@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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I like big butts and I cannot lie

[โ€“] csm10495@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

I read this and thought: if someone wants a boob job: okie.

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