Assuming the tech was here
How far would you go?
In theory, I wouldn’t hesitate one second to replace a substantial amount of my body with chrome — legs, arms, internal organs, eyes, etc — but I think actually going through with removing a healthy bodypart that I didn’t hate and has served me well enough would be difficult. Nevertheless I don’t think I’d really regret having gotten it done, so it’d just be like any other big scary surgery.
I don’t think I’d want to do whole-body biotech upgrades like increasing muscle density or nervous system efficiency or whatever, because that effects a lot of things, so it’s both more invasive and could have a lot more accidental unintended consequences. I’d probably start with replacing my left arm with a cybernetic one, since that’s my off hand so I won’t miss it as much if something goes wrong. Then use that as a platform to tinker and experiment and decide if I want to go further.
As for what kind of chrome I’d want to chip — I want the simplest, sturdiest, most robust thing that can possibly work, something I can understand as completely as possible, something that I can at least somewhat repair and upgrade myself, something that’s well-known for reliability. Nothing super flashy with a lot of moving parts so its flimsy and unreliable, I want the PineTime or ThinkPad T420 of cyberware. And of course I’d flash it with open source firmware and remove all the corpo software and tracking I could!
I’d be a lot more careful about modifying my brain, for two reasons.
First of all, my theory of personal identity / consciousness is that the sense of coherent, singular identity doesn’t come from a single, constant set of essential characteristics — whether physical or psychological — but from there being a sufficient resemblance between yourself prior to any given change and yourself after any given change, and a coherent self-narrative pathway from one to the other so that you can reconcile the two. Yourself at 20 and yourself at 35 can have completely different interests, beliefs, neural pathways, memories (our memories falsify over time, after all), and whatever else, but it’s still you — how? Because you got there by a step by step process where you remained you between each change, and so by the transitive property, you’re still you at the end, even if you’re completely different now. If A ≈ B, and B ≈ C, and C ≈ D, then A ≈ D, even if A and D are completely different, because they’ve got this web of other things connecting them. Thus, if I’m going to maintain my sense of being myself, instead of accidentally killing myself off, I’m going to have to do any modifications of my brain slowly, step by step, and adjust to each one before getting the next one.
Which works out, because of my second point: if an implant in your brain goes wrong, its WAY, WAY, WAAAAAY worse than if something goes wrong with your body. Like, brain damage is no joke kids, I’m dealing with the fallout of it right now and it is not fun. And of course, as we all know, tech fails. A lot. It’s buggy as shit. It’s often pushed out the door before it’s ready. It has vulnerabilities. So I’d want to keep the brain mods minimal if I did any at all — tried and true, tested, resiliant, as simple as possible, and not connected to the 'net.
Ever since I first saw augmentations stuff in cyberpunk media or likewise I’ve always wanted to get it. Get cool new arms, get eyes that can zoom in or whatever, maybe lungs to help with stamina, etc. But when I actually think about doing it, I dunno if I could go through with it. Like eyes would probably be an obvious choice for me, but thinking about actually having that done freaks me out a little.
It’d be a different matter if it needed replacing I think, rather than replacing them purely to be better. If I was gonna be blind, I think I’d take augmentated eyes in a heartbeat, same for any other part of my body. Though perhaps if we ever do get there, seeing other people do it might make the prospect less scary for me to replace healthy parts.
Oh and also hope we don’t need any anti-rejections drugs like the Deus Ex prequels…
All the way. I’ve just found someone irl to start putting implants under my skin, and that’s already more exciting to me than anything else in my life. I’m not very tied to being made of meat, so as soon as I can legally have my left arm replaced with a robotic prosthetic that functions just as well or better, I will.
Are you talking about https://dangerousthings.com/ ?
I just got my first couple implants a couple months ago now. They’re pretty great! My advice though, make you have a plan to actually use them in day-to-day life.
I have one tag as a clone as my fob to get into work, and another tag I use with my smart home stuff. My favorite is a sensor I have hidden behind the siding on my house that opens my garage.
Something I want to do is become a scannable art gallery. I plan to get cybernetic panel tattoos, and I think it would be extremely interesting for each panel’s “Access Port”, or what have you, to have an NFC implanted under it so it would actually be scannable.
It would take you to a web page featuring vector art of the piece, a high quality photo of the piece, the artist’s name, time taken, when it was done, where it was done, etc. I’ve never seen it done before, but it’s also super expensive in both directions, so I’m just gonna try and get it done with what means I can.
Ideally, I would get a design, work out where it’s going, talk about having an implant injected into the location, and then work out how to design the scannable area. After the injection site heals, the tattoo would be done.
Also, yes, I’m referring to Dangerous Things.
I’ve just found someone irl to start putting implants under my skin
That is really exciting, what’re you gonna implant?
Nothing in my brain. Anything else is fair game, but I’d prefer to remain mostly human-looking. A “sleeper build”, so to speak. I’d probably focus on improving sensory acuity and strength/resiliency.
Full package. Replace everything you can, doc. Done with flesh’s limits. Immortality through tech.