>> Something that nearly made me fall out laughing when I read
>>Legacy--in all of the other fic I've read where Megazone does
>>self-insertion, he ends up cyborged out the wazoo..
>
>I'm first in line for the implants when they get them working...

Actually, that's a thought. All the 'ware in these stories seem to be lifted right from Cyberpunk, save for some of your tech (and contacts) near the end of the Exile in UF, MZ...and those were definitely Shadowrun. While I think whoever invented the Shadowrun dice system should be forced to roll d6's for all eternity, I love the game world and think you guys would do an excellent job writing a story set there. Have you ever considered doing something like that for SR or CP?

Oh, yes, and now for something marginally off-topic. Verbena's Ridiculous Factoid #1: Would you believe I still occasionally run a tabletop Street Fighter campaign? It hasn't gone on in a while, but it's still around and people ask for it again occasionally. Pity we don't have time for any more games.

--"I invoke the rites of fiery Muspelheim, and give thy soul up to the inferno's embrace..."

Well, neither CP or SR can claim creation on a lot of that stuff either - Gibson, Sterling, Stephensen, et al, did a lot of it first and/or better.

Long, long ago I did play CP2020 and SR, and I GM'd some SR. I still have the game books, but I stopped buying them ages ago.

I did, however, recently acquire all of the SR novels and I've started to reread them (I read the first many back when they came out). A new one was just published that I have yet to acquire.

>Have you ever considered doing something like that for SR or CP?

Not seriously, at least not on my part. Gryphon did write a short story based in a CP2020 game universe though.

-MegaZone, megazone@megazone.org
Personal Homepage http://www.megazone.org/
Eyrie Productions FanFic http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

... or the things that Cyberpunk lifted them from...

>, save for some of your tech (and contacts)
>near the end of the Exile in UF, MZ...and those were definitely
>Shadowrun. While I think whoever invented the Shadowrun dice system
>should be forced to roll d6's for all eternity, I love the game world
>and think you guys would do an excellent job writing a story set
>there. Have you ever considered doing something like that for SR or
>CP?

I've considered it, but haven't done anything about it. I played in a Shadowrun campaign in high school and have fond memories of a couple of characters and adventures, but if I start resurrecting my old RPG charas for side stories, Don Griffin of "Marvel Super Heroes" gets the nod first. After all, he's responsible for my nick and the signature power armor that's turned up here and there. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, Netadmin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

I love the idea of cyber, but I can't decide if I would actually do it or not if it were really available. Rigging sounds like incredible fun, and lack of an interface that can match my speed-of-thought is my biggest frustration in computing, but I don't know how much I like the idea of futzing with my body in nontrivial ways. Tattoos and mild piercings are one thing, hooking up electronics to my nervous system is another.

-- Sean --

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." -- Albert Einstein

"It's not easy being green." -- Kermit the Frog

Sure, hook up 'trodes to my synapses, I'm fine with that, but there's really no reason for me to hook up blades to my forearms... at least, not until there is a somewhat radical shift in the world's cultures...

Frankly, moving eighty times as fast as the average mehum sounds fun, but it also sounds like it would get irritating _real_ fast...

-Craig
Need something to read?
http://www.wpi.edu/~perko

That's why they provide internal switches, ne? =P
I forget the actual name, but you can get a mental switch installed so you're not bouncing around like a rabbit on crack all the time.

--"I invoke the rites of fiery Muspelheim, and give thy soul up to the inferno's embrace..."

-Craig
Need something to read?
http://www.wpi.edu/~perko

Offsides

#include <stdsig.h>

Hehe. Though that smacks more of CP than SR...the SoulKiller virus, ne?

--"I invoke the rites of fiery Muspelheim, and give thy soul up to the inferno's embrace..."

-jer

Based on the example of people who keep dream-journals, I suspect you'd find that the ideas and stories which seem really great and profound in your head will still end up looking lame on paper, whether the transfer is by pen, keyboard, or jack. :( Doing it "the hard way" just allows one to blame the process.

(The "you" in the above statement is not personal; if anything, I'm speaking of myself.)

But it IS UV-coated. ;)

Ard Sumhenner
Ronin Research, Silicon Valley, CA

Having a big old cybernetic arm with guns stapped on would be great for intimidation, and it'd mean that there'd not be a streetfight on Earth I'd back away from. Replacing my eyes with cybernetic versions would not only correct my (admittedly minor) vision problems, it would mean that I'd be able to see anything I wanted with perfect clarity. Installing a speed-movement system would be unbelievably cool, because I'd finally be able to pull off all my various martial arts tricks with slightly more graceful timing, not to mention finally being able to do the "blinding fast" thing. Having a datajack would mean that computers would start doing exactly what I wanted, exactly when I wanted.

And having a big cyberarm would mean I'd never be able to touch Erin's cheek with it. Replacing my eyes would mean that I lose some quintessential part of our communication. Speed-movement would mean that I was always moving far faster than her. And no matter what you might believe, hooking my brain into a computer would mean that my brain started thinking like a computer, not like the human being she cares about.

Wow. That wasn't a hard decision at all.
-Eliot "Well, sure, when you put it that way" Lefebvre
-=()=-
We're only given a little time in our lives to waste. Make the most of it.
Electronic Transcendance Productions
Producer of, um, stuff for an unspecified time-period.

All of this is only a factor if you bought cheap, crappy ware. The good stuff would be designed to do all the jobs the original equipment did. (And in reflex boosters, remember, adjustable response levels are your friend.)

Sure, inadequate replacement levels would be a problem for early adopters, so, say, Zoner would be a hideous man-machine with no capacity for tenderness or love, at least until the good stuff came out and he had to spend twice as much again getting himself refitted. But that's what always happens to early adopters. :)

>And no matter what you
>might believe, hooking my brain into a computer would mean that my
>brain started thinking like a computer, not like the human being she
>cares about.

... This makes no sense whatsoever. "Hooking my brain into a computer would mean that my brain started thinking like a computer"? Why does that necessarily follow? Hooking a computer up to a telephone switching system doesn't turn the computer into a telephone. It's just I/O.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, Netadmin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

No technology, no matter how complex or advanced, will ever be able to replace things that are essentially human. It doesn't matter if I buy a cyberarm when it first comes out or years later, it's never going to be my own arm. It doesn't matter if scientists have poured years of research into making all the synapses fire just right, in making the artificial surface change temperature with the rest of my body, in making it as close as possible to being real. It isn't real. It's not a human arm, it's a piece of machinery that does a very convincing job of being a human arm. It could never have the quirks of my own body, could never be a replacement, only a substitute.

Sure, I might have something that's pretty convincingly similar, so that for the most part nobody notices the difference. Should I ever find myself lacking a real limb, cybernetics would be a welcome salvation. But I'd still be missing an arm, and to willingly surrender that would be to willingly sacrifice part of me. There's a very small list of things that I'll do that for, and becoming a combat monstrosity is not one of them.

>... This makes no sense whatsoever. "Hooking my brain into a computer
>would mean that my brain started thinking like a computer"? Why does
>that necessarily follow? Hooking a computer up to a telephone
>switching system doesn't turn the computer into a telephone. It's
>just I/O.

When you're talking about hardware, yes. But we're not. We're talking about hardware interacting with wetware, with a piece of humanity that adapts to its environment intuitively. You spend time with people, you start to think and act a little like them. You spend time working in customer service, the habits start to creep over into your everyday life. You plug your brain into a computer and give it intimate contact with your CPU...

It's rampant speculation, I'll admit. Possibly, nothing at all will change, and maybe I'll remain totally unchanged by plugging my consciousness in with mechanical devices. But if I'm wrong, the consqequences are pretty severe, and the odds are rather fifty-fifty. I am a betting man, but I'm not foolhardy.
-Eliot "Suddenly have the passage about the Trinity Artificial Womb going through my head" Lefebvre
-=()=-
We're only given a little time in our lives to waste. Make the most of it.
Electronic Transcendance Productions
Producer of, um, stuff for an unspecified time-period.

>>It's just I/O.
>
>When you're talking about hardware, yes. But we're not.

Sure we are. Meat is hardware; it's just not very robust or modular hardware.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, Netadmin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

Rather the exact answer I expected, if somewhat more succinct. It's a rather banal view to take of things, however. Living organisms have their similarities to machines, some of them facilitating the comparisons that are often made. Some advanced hardware and primitive life tends to mimic one another very closely. But they're not the same; they're different on essential levels, in much the same sense that a computer and a telephone are similar. One cannot replace the other. You can slap on a cyberarm, but you can't replicate the arm with it.
-Eliot "Exactly the sort of answer I've come to expect from Gryphon" Lefebvre
-=()=-
We're only given a little time in our lives to waste. Make the most of it.
Electronic Transcendance Productions
Producer of, um, stuff for an unspecified time-period.

Is it? And you are, precisely, whom, to judge that?

>One cannot replace the
>other. You can slap on a cyberarm, but you can't replicate the arm
>with it.

Replicate the sensory reality of the arm - the way it looks, the way it feels to be touched by it, and the way it feels to own it and touch with it - and you have replicated the arm. Today's technology, I grant you, cannot do that. Sufficiently advanced technology will.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, Netadmin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

God. Have we met? ;>

My apologies - I should have appended that with "IMO". I assumed it was sort of implied, but...

>Replicate the sensory reality of the arm - the way it looks, the way
>it feels to be touched by it, and the way it feels to own it and touch
>with it - and you have replicated the arm. Today's technology, I
>grant you, cannot do that. Sufficiently advanced technology will.

Sufficiently advanced technology will be able to replicate what it feels like to be touched by the arm. It will be able to stimulate nerve endings in order to generate the same sensation of touching something. It will be even easier to replicate the look of a human arm. But I'll readily wager that it will never be possible to replace the feel of owning that arm, to make the arm feel entirely natural to its owner. You want to put money on that, I'll gladly accept the bet.

It's possible that in the future, I'll be proven wrong, and we'll have the technology to create a mechanical replacement for an arm that's indistinguishable from the real thing until you hack it open with a knife. But I'd tend to doubt it. There are some things that will remain distinctly human, no matter how hard we try to replicate them, because they're not simply mechanical, because we're not simply mechanical. We're flawed in that respect, and that's part of our charm.
-Eliot "The fact that we're having this debate could support that point in and of itself" Lefebvre
-=()=-
We're only given a little time in our lives to waste. Make the most of it.
Electronic Transcendance Productions
Producer of, um, stuff for an unspecified time-period.

Crap. Sensation is nothing more than electrical signaling. Figure out how to duplicate it and you've duplicated it. Period. The human body is merely an extremely complex, inefficient, messy machine, and any machine can be reverse-engineered, if sufficient resources and time are directed at the problem.

Now, you could argue that, for economic, political, sociological, or whatever reasons, it's extremely unlikely that sufficient resources and time will be directed at the problem, at least for the forseeable future, and that, as such, it is extremely unlikely that the interface capabilities of prosthetics will advance to the stage where they are, to their owner, indistinguishable from the real thing until and unless dismantled. You could make that argument, and I might even agree with it, given humanity's chronic inability to direct sufficient resources or time at to do anything worthwhile nowadays (where's our moon base? where's our Mars mission? where are the L-colonies? where's my robot girlfriend, dammit!).

But to make the bald-faced assertion that it's not possible, when the principle behind the problem is understandable to any college dropout and the problem itself is merely one of implementation?

That, sir, is plain and simple horseshit.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, Netadmin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

we're too human to improve ourselves in logical, technologically advanced methods.

my proof? look at the problems faced with early _iron_ plows. even that was considered "evil" for quite some time.

more recently, look at the IBM monopoly and FUD campaigns of the Bad Old Days "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM"

in conclusion, I'd like to say that while zoner's under getting his metal put in, I'm going to be a) having jacks sunk into my wrists (an out of fashion location, but coming back into vouge) and b) flirting shamelessly with the attractive female attendant at the simple, cheap, relatively painless, low-impact procedure.

and that that last paragraph is likely bullshit on both counts.

cyberware. Filed under the "I wish, but not likely in my lifetime" category.

My proof:
look at the problems faced with early _iron_ plows. even
that was considered "evil" for quite some time.

Are iron plows evil today?

Everything following should be taken as my point of view. I do not claim to be a judgmental fellow, or have the right to judge.

Sociological and sociopolitical views change. Often due to radical technological innovation. When the government falls too far behind it's people, either physically (for example: gross repression or genocide) or technologically/ideologically (for example: England's great empire) it is replaced.

Now, before anyone gets their dander up, yes, the old timers who lived in America revolted due to 'oppression'. Uh, right, the tax wasn't near a level that would count as 'gross repression'. Really, it was more about an ideological difference in the importance of freedom (assuming, for the case of this argument, that nobody is going to argue about why the Americans -really- revolted. If you do, please start a new thread).

And the connection of technology? It makes the youthful folks take on ideological views which match the technology curve (very, very few people over fifty care to play video games). It's the same kind of thing that makes music tastes change - whatever you grow up with is the norm.

As time goes on, and technology gets higher and higher, society will adjust. In a century, people will probably look back on this and say, 'How backwards they were, to think that such-and-such would never happen, or that so-and-so would. their culture was so primitive.' In the same way that we giggle about how the body has 'distempers caused by imbalances in the bodily fluid, especially black bile' and 'leaching will help. Trust us!'

Never assume something won't happen. The government will change (hell, it'll probably be replaced rather violently, near the end of our natural life spans), and with it, I believe the ideas of cloning, genetic editing, and cybernetics (which are just now coming into early useful stages) will also change. Hopefully, become more accepted, and not less.

-Craig

On some other website.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, Netadmin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

>I believe that functional cyberware will never enter the
>public/private domain. Not for technological reasons, but instead for
>sociopolitical reasons...
>we're too human to improve ourselves in logical, technologically
>advanced methods.

What is "logical, techonologically advanced methods"? Humans are curious. Most the curious end up dead, but the lucky few do something -- add to the 5000 year dialogue -- and advance our technology in fits and starts with a pattern that is on the surface choatic and in reality organized.

You have to note that Gryphon has speculated that early adapters of bioware will have really terrible ends. He's probably right. Pioneers usually do. The rest of us learn from their mistakes and make progress eratically.

Doubt me? Check out the industrial revolution. Can anyone claim that we "modernized" in a orderly fashion? That is was clean and neat? Can any one claim that it didn't happen? We advance imperfectly, yet we still addvance.

Your logic suggests that the following would be true:

It's not an uncommon pattern - someone gets a leg up in science (or anything) and declares the race over, they have the ultimate in this field so everyone else can jolly well stop trying to beat us. SO there!
This lasts until someone actually does better them (usually to get rid of the smug smirk) and is either hired or sets the whole ball rolling.

For example, in the early renaissence, the Catholic Church declared that all anyone needed to know about gunpowder was enshrined in a learned document written by (surprise) a Catholic priest. Enter Leonardo da Vinci in his brief career as a siege engineer, with the results of a reasonable series of scientific experiments that had demonstrated rather better quality gunpowder. The Papal States got a lot smaller in the next few years.

FYI: Leon's finest hour was his observation that if he couldn't knock down a castle wall, he could certainly knock down the gates and run inside with a few light cannons to hold them open long enough formthe rest of the army to get in.

drakensisthered

So I simply said one of the great trite truths: "There is generally more than one side to a story." - Corwin, Roger Zelazny's 'Courts of Chaos'

I'm gonna hafta agree with Gryph here.

Extremely rudimentary limbs that are controlled by the brain's output already exist -- I remember reading about a leg of that nature a good five years ago. Not to mention that monkey who moved an arm by remote control directly from taps on the brain. Feedback through the nervous system will be the next step, and it'll likely start out with fairly simple pressure sensors. In the Ghost in the Shell manga, Shirow Masamune described a fiber-optic skin that could be used to duplicate the senses handled by the human skin -- I don't know how much of it is truly viable, but it could easily work for pressure/contact at least. The main obstacle I can see is that our senses are analog, not digital, and any input system would have to have an extremely high resolution... but that's just a matter of engineering, not invention.

As for cybernetic eyes... I know that there's been work done on creating artificial eyes that interface with the brain directly, but the last I heard on it (which was a very long time ago, since I don't keep up with these technologies) was that the primary obstacle was simply figuring out how to encode the signals so that the brain could decode them. A modern CCD could produce a useful resolution, if not one that would get you a driver's license. And you'd have the possibility of being able to add on things like telephoto or alternate spectra as the technology advanced.

Speed systems... that's much trickier, as that would be a LOT of monkeying around with the nervous system, much moreso than anything else. I'd be reluctant to adopt that.

Datajacks will almost certainly not be two-way at first... it'll amount to something that replaces the keyboard and mouse to begin with, and when they deem feedback systems suitable for use in humans (which will probably interface through the same kinds of systems that will control cybernetic limbs and sensory organs -- thus, cyberspace), they'll be much changed.

Me, I'll take eyes and a datajack. Or, at least, implanted cybernetic contact lenses that'll let me modulate my visual spectrum (thus, 20/20 or better vision, and night vision), and a jack that'll let me plug into the a USB or IEEE-1394 port and control the computer that way.

El, on thinking about this, I'm going to have to disagree wholeheartedly on how jacking directly into a computer would affect you. The environment would be shaped to fit how humans interact with the world, a goal that GUI developers have been working on for about thirty years. Visual icons are easier to learn than text-based commands, and a full-immersion environment would be even easier to learn, and potentially much faster than even a command-line interface.

-- Sean --

http://www.thebrokenlink.org The Broken Link 4.0 is live!
"Imagination is more important than knowledge." -- Albert Einstein
"It's not easy being green." -- Kermit the Frog

>As for cybernetic eyes... I know that there's been work done on
>creating artificial eyes that interface with the brain directly, but
>the last I heard on it (which was a very long time ago, since I don't
>keep up with these technologies) was that the primary obstacle was
>simply figuring out how to encode the signals so that the brain could
>decode them. A modern CCD could produce a useful resolution, if not
>one that would get you a driver's license. And you'd have the
>possibility of being able to add on things like telephoto or alternate
>spectra as the technology advanced.

Experiments are showing the electric pulse modulations which create the input of your eye. It's actually not analog, as I understand it, but a kind of morse code of pulses. If I'm wrong, someone fix me!

>Speed systems... that's much trickier, as that would be a LOT of
>monkeying around with the nervous system, much moreso than anything
>else. I'd be reluctant to adopt that.

Created to aide people with the multitude of nervous-system affecting disorders, it will probably involve chemical and bacteral/biological mass treatment, not invasive surgery. I would certainly wait about five years to see if anyone gets 'the black shakes', but I'd go for it. Call me a foolhardy pioneer.

>Datajacks will almost certainly not be two-way at first... it'll
>amount to something that replaces the keyboard and mouse to begin
>with, and when they deem feedback systems suitable for use in humans
>(which will probably interface through the same kinds of systems that
>will control cybernetic limbs and sensory organs -- thus, cyberspace),
>they'll be much changed.

Err, I have to disagree, actually. It's easier to put stuff into the brain (the brain will eventually adapt to any reasonable stimulus if handled correctly), but taking information out of it requires that you figure out not only the specific structure of the brain, but that you somehow link it up on a per-person basis to outputs... not easy.

You could, perhaps, do this to a child - a young person whose brain grows up around the device. It would likely be easier to use some relatively unused nerves in the spine or nape of the neck to trigger the actions of which you speak.

Of course, before any of that comes out, society will have to change significantly. And, hypnotic input/output will probably come before that as well (want to play a game? Want to be in the game? As real as jacking, and twice as dangerous!)

>El, on thinking about this, I'm going to have to disagree
>wholeheartedly on how jacking directly into a computer would affect
>you. The environment would be shaped to fit how humans interact with
>the world, a goal that GUI developers have been working on for about
>thirty years. Visual icons are easier to learn than text-based
>commands, and a full-immersion environment would be even easier to
>learn, and potentially much faster than even a command-line interface.

You think this wouldn't affect a human? Your basis is correct in the ways which you would interact, but you would become wholly dependant on that interaction, which would most certainly change your person quite a lot. I know that a whole new class of people has sprung up (and I am one of them - most of the people here are) that are completely addicted to the interfaces we currently have. Imagine if they were always available (sitting in bed, in the shower, on the john, in class) and several times as fast...

-Craig

Well, I fixed your HTML, at any rate ;P.

>Err, I have to disagree, actually. It's easier to put stuff into the
>brain (the brain will eventually adapt to any reasonable stimulus if
>handled correctly), but taking information out of it requires that you
>figure out not only the specific structure of the brain, but that you
>somehow link it up on a per-person basis to outputs... not easy.

I dunno. I'd imagine data jacks being created as a byproduct of nerve impulses not directly from the brain, but from another part of the body -- say, hijacking some nerves in the spine or even in the arm. Then it's just a matter of retraining how to handle those nerves -- it'd take an adult longer, but it'd be possible.

But if the development of direct input into the various and sundry sensory connections into the brain matures quickly enough, datajacks of the Shadowrun type would appear before the kind of intermediary step I'm describing would probably appear much quicker. Output would just be through redirected motor impulses when the datajack is activated, as the ideal environment would simply be a metaphor based on physical reality, rather than the by-necessity extremely abstract metaphors we use now.

>You think this wouldn't affect a human? Your basis is correct in the
>ways which you would interact, but you would become wholly dependant
>on that interaction, which would most certainly change your person
>quite a lot.

Maybe, but he was talking about "thinking more like a computer". Addiction might set in, but that's because of content. Through the 'net as it exists, I can interact with a much larger group than I can IRL, and one more attuned to my interests. When the Matrix (cf. Gibson, not Shadowrun) or whatever it ends up being called rolls around, that just means I'll get a full-sensory version. I think, personally, that the vast majority of the datajack-net will end up more like Futurama -- full of ads and crap -- than the more fantastic, adventurous Shadowrun idea. Yes, people will get addicted, but it's not going to change your entire thought pattern. You'll still be human, not a computer.

-- Sean --

http://www.thebrokenlink.org The Broken Link 4.0 is live!
"Imagination is more important than knowledge." -- Albert Einstein
"It's not easy being green." -- Kermit the Frog

I went to try to fix it, and my connection to Eyrie went down mysteriously for long enough for me to give up at about one this morning.

Regardless, it sounds like we're both arguing for the same points. Nice to know that someone thinks the same way I do, at least a little.

-Craig

Well, you do take the opposing side on pretty much every philisophical debate we've ever taken part in, so it's not entirely a surprise... ;>

>Me, I'll take eyes and a datajack.

Let me keep the eyes. I like my eyes. Okay, I've got a slight vision problem that will get worse over time, I know. But one of my most distinct features when meeting me in person is my eyes, and I'm not so annoyed with my vision problems so that I'll want to tamper with them. I'll wear glasses, thanks.

>...jacking directly into a computer would affect
>you. The environment would be shaped to fit how humans interact with
>the world, a goal that GUI developers have been working on for about
>thirty years. Visual icons are easier to learn than text-based
>commands, and a full-immersion environment would be even easier to
>learn, and potentially much faster than even a command-line interface.

Again, much like the debate I've been having with Gryph: it's well within the realm of possibility that there'd be no effect on your thought processes whatsoever. But we're mucking about with serious stuff, plugging a human brain directly into a computer, and I'd not be so certain that there won't be any side effects. Even a sufficiently godlike and realistic GUI would have its own little quirks, its own ways of operating, and given enough time you'd start to act by those rules.

Though I finished the series a few months ago and my memories a bit fuzzy, I believe Tad Williams touches on this in his Otherland quartet. I know some of the characters mirror my own feelings on the situation, at least.
-Eliot "It's not my writing, so it's not a shameless plug" Lefebvre
-=()=-
We're only given a little time in our lives to waste. Make the most of it.
Electronic Transcendance Productions
Producer of, um, stuff for an unspecified time-period.

>Again, much like the debate I've been having with Gryph: it's well
>within the realm of possibility that there'd be no effect on your
>thought processes whatsoever. But we're mucking about with serious
>stuff, plugging a human brain directly into a computer, and I'd not be
>so certain that there won't be any side effects. Even a sufficiently
>godlike and realistic GUI would have its own little quirks, its own
>ways of operating, and given enough time you'd start to act by those
>rules.

You reminded me of Snow Crash. Stephenson argues that reading and the use of language causes a reprogramming of the human brain. Learn another language, your brain gets reprogrammed. Learn to read (or more accurrately, reason) that physical shapes carry symbolic reading, and your brain is reprogrammed again.

I act (symbolically) through the medium of language and follow its rules. We colloqually call them grammar and spelling. They help make our imperfect communication intelligble.

Computer "language" is just that -- symbolically rendered grammar and spelling for a program (activity or set of related activities) or operating system (cosmology and dictionary/encyclopedia).

Thus, cyberware would follow an imperfect cosmology with it's own special syntax and grammar that would then try to communicate through some translation to your brain's current language programming. The translation is likely to be inaccurate. Kinda like the Delewares of Pennsilvania giving away all North America to the Penns because their translators sucked. Or in a slighly more advanced version, trying to use one English word to completely translate "quiero".

I'm not afraid of learning languages, even though I know they are messing with my brain. The words "nichevo" and "duck!" cause specific physical reactions without my conscious thought. I suspect bioware will cause the same results in its users. Of course I had to discipline myself to learn so speak Russian and Spanish. Future users of bioware will need to do the same.

philosophically,
t.

Trigger Argee
trigger_argee@hotmail.com
Manon, Orado, etc.
Denton, never leave home without it.

Yes, well, pretty much everyone on this forum seems to disagree with me about this. Sort of to be expected when you take an anti-cyberware stance on a board frequented by computer geeks. ;>

You get major points for being the second person to disagree without outright dismissing my opinions as crap, however. ;>

>You reminded me of Snow Crash.

Never read it, but your capsule description sounds fascinating. I'll have to take a look.

>Thus, cyberware would follow an imperfect cosmology with it's own
>special syntax and grammar that would then try to communicate through
>some translation to your brain's current language programming. The
>translation is likely to be inaccurate. Kinda like the Delewares of
>Pennsilvania giving away all North America to the Penns because their
>translators sucked. Or in a slighly more advanced version, trying to
>use one English word to completely translate "quiero".

In Stranger in a Strange Land, one character (who has an Arabic name that I cannot recall right now) describes languages as maps of concepts, with each language having certain areas mapped out. English is one of the most expansive "maps" out there, but there are some concepts that simply aren't mapped out in English that are in other languages. "Nani" isn't "what" in Japanese, it's a concept that most closely resembles the concept in English referred to as "what". It's a question of similarity, not of a one-one exchange.

I've pretty much used that view for most of my linguistic interpretation subsequently, and it's rather eye-opening at times.

>I'm not afraid of learning languages, even though I know they are
>messing with my brain. The words "nichevo" and "duck!" cause specific
>physical reactions without my conscious thought. I suspect bioware
>will cause the same results in its users. Of course I had to
>discipline myself to learn so speak Russian and Spanish. Future users
>of bioware will need to do the same.

Isn't this more or less agreeing with me? Perhaps I simply stated it inaccurately, but unless I'm dramatically failing to grasp your argument, you're more or less mirroring my point. Interacting with the computer through cyberware will teach your brain that "language", and you'll start thinking in terms of that language, at least partially. I usually think in English, but my knowledge of French changes the way that I think as a whole. Same thing with cybernetic computer interface.
-Eliot "Trigger gets a cookie" Lefebvre
-=()=-
We're only given a little time in our lives to waste. Make the most of it.
Electronic Transcendance Productions
Producer of, um, stuff for an unspecified time-period.

>You reminded me of Snow Crash. Stephenson argues that reading
>and the use of language causes a reprogramming of the human brain.

Are you at all familiar with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? It sounds like Stephenson is just restating it.

Benjamin Whorf was a linguist who lived at the early part of this century, and based on, primarily but among other things, his study of the Hopi language, he arrived at a hypothesis concerning language and thought. To simplify his hypothesis, the language that you speak and think in affects how you think, to the point where speakers of two vastly different languages -- such as English and Hopi -- will see and understand the world in very different ways. I don't speak Hopi and I don't have the book he wrote on the subject (I borrowed it from a college library about seven years ago), so I can't provide the specific examples, but the way Hopi describes the world is in a far more dynamic fashion than English does. Hopi doesn't even have the noun/verb/adjective/adverb etc. structure that Indo-European languages have.

If you study a language that's slightly different from your native language -- such as, in my case, French and German -- you start to understand that there are concepts that just don't translate. There's no single word in French that properly translates the English word "home", and I don't believe there is one in German either (but I'm not sure... I never learned as much German as I did English). English vs. Romance language word order affects how you see objects -- in Romance languages, most adjectives follow the noun, and when you're thinking in that language, you tend to think of things in that order. It's a slight shift.

Moving to a language that's much more different, like Hopi, or a dialect of Chinese, or Korean... that requires a much greater shift in thought processes. And because the language adjusts to adapt to the culture, and thus reinforces that culture in its speakers, thought is altered.

To bring this back to the parent discussion, my argument is that a full-immersion computer interface via datajack will be designed to mimic the real world. Music and sound files might look like CDs, and you'd load them into the player application by putting it into an icon that looks like a CD player. Text files and word processor files might look like paper documents kept in a filing cabinet, and we might interact with them through a pen, or through a typewriter, or what-have-you. The interface would adapt to how we interact with the world... but we'd also have a great deal more flexibility.

But to say that it wouldn't affect your thinking at all would be naive of me... after all, things would be possible in cyberspace that aren't possible in the real world. I could carry around a duffel bag in which I could fit more than its volume could account for. I might conjure up a much more abstract maintenance menu that floats in midair. And then, when I'm jacked out and working in the real world, I might reach for my magic duffel bag of wonders or try to call up a maintenance menu before remembering that such things don't exist in the Real World.

But I simply do not believe that one's thought processes would be inhuman.

-- Sean --

http://www.thebrokenlink.org The Broken Link 4.0 is live!
"Imagination is more important than knowledge." -- Albert Einstein
"It's not easy being green." -- Kermit the Frog

Thank you for making my point so eloquently.

>But to say that it wouldn't affect your thinking at all would
>be naive of me... after all, things would be possible in cyberspace
>that aren't possible in the real world. I could carry around a duffel
>bag in which I could fit more than its volume could account for. I
>might conjure up a much more abstract maintenance menu that floats in
>midair. And then, when I'm jacked out and working in the real world,
>I might reach for my magic duffel bag of wonders or try to call up a
>maintenance menu before remembering that such things don't exist in
>the Real World.
>
>But I simply do not believe that one's thought processes would be
>inhuman.

That's what I was trying point out -- that the taboo idea of implanting a computer in your brain is no different then learning a language. Languag causes human interactions, directs action, creates seemingly instictive responses, and scrambles your brain and sets it on different paths.

It does not, by its nature, make your thoughts and actions inhuman.

Someone could, of course, invent an horrible language that programs you to take abomindable actions that cause you to commit crimes or reprorgam you to be indifferent to other people's humanity. But you don't need a computer to accomplish this. We humans have already done that more times that we wish to remember, with words, slogans, and fear.

t.

Trigger Argee
trigger_argee@hotmail.com
Manon, Orado, etc.
Denton, never leave home without it.

It's still tangentially on-topic. It's also sucking time away from getting on20 Episode 14 done, but that's going to be done tomorrow anyways. ;>

>But to say that it wouldn't affect your thinking at all would
>be naive of me... after all, things would be possible in cyberspace
>that aren't possible in the real world. I could carry around a duffel
>bag in which I could fit more than its volume could account for. I
>might conjure up a much more abstract maintenance menu that floats in
>midair. And then, when I'm jacked out and working in the real world,
>I might reach for my magic duffel bag of wonders or try to call up a
>maintenance menu before remembering that such things don't exist in
>the Real World.
>
>But I simply do not believe that one's thought processes would be
>inhuman.

Not for you or I, no. We're used to the real world, we know how it works and how to interact with it. Casually using the datajack every now and again would probably result in just minor screwups such as the ones you mentioned.

But I'm not talking about just casually using a datajack, because I don't casually use a computer. I use one fairly immersively. Spend at least ten hours every day jacked into a computer, and your brain is going to have one language being pushed out of prominence as a new one becomes more commonly used. Your thinking patterns will start to adapt to the computer - something that is by definition partially inhuman. Not in the sense that your computer will tell you to kill people, but in the sense that you'll be distanced from the real world. Distancing oneself from humanity makes it very difficult to avoid becoming at least a little inhuman.

And imagine a generation that grows up and learns the language of the Wired not as a second language, but as their first. I'd not place bets that they'd be entirely human-thinking, either.
-Eliot "Ooh, fanfic idea" Lefebvre
-=()=-
We're only given a little time in our lives to waste. Make the most of it.
Electronic Transcendance Productions
Producer of, um, stuff for an unspecified time-period.

Bah, Eliot, that already happens, at least to me. I spend long enough focused on one activity, then I spend the next several hours after I've finished interpreting everything through shades of that activity. It usually happens with games - System Shock 2 had me instinctively wanting to avoid/destroy security cameras around my workplace for a couple of days. But there's a funny old thing about the human mind - it adapts. You unplug, you're a little weird for a while, but then you get right back into the swing of things. I mean, hell, if you're using your computer "fairly immersively" even with today's I/O hardware, and you're not a little spaced when you come up for air, then you're not human now, in my book. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, Netadmin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

This vaguely reminds me of a famous expirement some guy did at some point (yeah, I'm great with specifics). Basically, what he did was make himself a pair of glasses that flipped the world upside-down. He wore them constantly for a month or so, and when he took them off he had as much trouble getting around town as he did when he put them on in the first place. He got back to normal eventually, but I've always wanted to try that...

To get vaguely back on topic, the main problem I have with cyberware is that I'm not convinced that the brain - the adult brain, at least - can adapt to radically new sorts of input. This mainly comes into play with cybereyes. What, exactley, would infrared look like? I think it would work if it were just a switch you flipped and you suddenly see through a Predator-cam. I don't think it would be viable to be on all the time, as just an expansion of the visible spectrum. I don't think the brain could adapt to something as radically new as that. Some animals see further into the spectrums than we do (bees, I believe, can see ultaviolet), but they have evolved that way over millions of years. I just don't think our brain would know what the hell to do with the extra input. Do notice that I specified the adult brain above. Infants fitted with cyberwear - ethics aside - would adapt to them very nicely.

It is true that the human brain is extremely adaptable. it does have limits, however. I don't believe rigging will be possible without months or years of training, and reflexes would never actually work right when rigging. Reflexes are too tied into our central nervous and muscle system to translate into a machine. Unconcious things like the knee-jerk reflex just woulldn't happen.

And while we are near the topic, I just want to say something that has always irritated me about complete artificial realities, such as in The Matrix. What about drugs? You couldn't even get drunk in the Matrix, unless the machines dumped alchohol into your meat brain. Anything else would just come from the placebo effect. Just something that's been bugging me.

-Nightmare Butterfly
But then again, I don't have a medical degree or anything. I freely admit my wrongitude.

Lets see how this works...

My reply to NightmareButterfly (post #50 in this thread), for sake of topic drift:

http://www.eyrie-productions.com/Forum/dcboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=97&forum=DCForumID11&omm=1

Various admin types, is this a cool way to do this? Just curious...

------------------------
"saaaausaaaage... "
------------------------
Chad Collier
Digital Bitch
J. Random VFX Company

<Blue>Y'know, the whole "arrogant dismissal of my views" thing is starting to get just the slightest bit annoying...</Blue>
<Pink>YOU WILL GET NOTHING!</Pink>

>...that already happens, at least to me. I spend long enough
>focused on one activity, then I spend the next several hours after
>I've finished interpreting everything through shades of that activity.
> It usually happens with games - System Shock 2 had me
>instinctively wanting to avoid/destroy security cameras around my
>workplace for a couple of days. But there's a funny old thing about
>the human mind - it adapts. You unplug, you're a little weird
>for a while, but then you get right back into the swing of things. I
>mean, hell, if you're using your computer "fairly immersively" even
>with today's I/O hardware, and you're not a little spaced when you
>come up for air, then you're not human now, in my book. :)

Metal Gear Solid made me unspeakably paranoid for at least a week. I won't tell you what I've been thinking since I've resumed playing Vagrant Story. ;>

However, this is partially my point: even now, you get a little spaced when you're interfacing with the computer through relatively rudimentary third-party interfaces. Now imagine if that interface wasn't just an interface, it was for all intents and purposes an absolute reality.

Uh-huh. Before I start handing out datajacks, I'd want to be sure that there'd been a lot of testing done.
-Eliot "A shame nobody replied to my language post, but I'll get to that" Lefebvre
-=()=-
We're only given a little time in our lives to waste. Make the most of it.
Electronic Transcendance Productions
Producer of, um, stuff for an unspecified time-period.

I was playing Thief Gold before A-kon this year. When I went on staff, I found that I wanted to extinguish the "torches" in the service elevator lobby because the room was too bright. I also had the fleeting urge to blackjack a maid that suddenly came out of one of those elevators. That game had my brain for lunch, man.

Personally, I'm all for replacing the bits that don't work. I've already had my eyes worked on to get them to work right. If cybereyes get developed to the point of good reception, I'll probably look into them. "Slight" vision deficiencies are all well and good, but when you have 20/1000 vision, uncorrected, it sucks.

Ebony the Black Dragon
aka Draco Draconis Ebenium
known to the Texas Corneal Institute as Aaron F. Johnson,
Senior Editor, Living Room Games
http://www.lrgames.com
(and LASIK subject)

>And imagine a generation that grows up and learns the language of the
>Wired not as a second language, but as their first. I'd not
>place bets that they'd be entirely human-thinking, either.

But if the 'language of the Wired' was written by humans to be interpreted by humans, how different will they really be? I think what's set off the difference of opinion is that, in effect, you're saying the computers will mold the people, but the computers--at this point and probably for some time to come--are in turn molded by people, and useless without code written by a human being. I would agree with you if you were talking about jacking in and interfacing with a purely machine language not touched by human hands, as it were, but the language of the code in a computer is as human-crafted as English, Spanish, Chinese, what have you.

And even if/when we get into the realm of a.i., the first several generations at least will have the bias of Man built in from line one.

Interesting side thought: When we decode the language dolphins use to the point where we can communicate with them, how will learning a truely non-human language--or at least intelligent interactions with a non-human species on a serious level--change the perceptions of humans? It seems to me that something like that would repersent a larger change in perception than jacking into a human created machine, but because it's a machine and artificial, we are more leery of that than interaction with another living creature, even if it's of a different species than our own.

Just a thought.

------------------------
"saaaausaaaage... "
------------------------
Chad Collier
Digital Bitch
J. Random VFX Company

http://www.eyrie-productions.com/Forum/dcboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=97&forum=DCForumID11&omm=6

Good idea you had there, Wedge. Commendations are in order. ;>
-Eliot "Now if we could just do something about links popping in a new window" Lefebvre
-=()=-
We're only given a little time in our lives to waste. Make the most of it.
Electronic Transcendance Productions
Producer of, um, stuff for an unspecified time-period.

For the masses this is called television. And that's not flippant.

I regularly spend 10, 12, 14, or more hours a day at a computer. I don't then treat people like a UNIX command line, or attempt to speak Java to them, or think they can be pushed around like a machine can. I interact with machines MUCH more than I do with other people - that's part of my job. I still know how to function in society.

Sure, there are people who can't, and that is true with or without cyberware. There are otaku today who don't know who to interact with anyone, or anything, outside of their sphere of interest. There are the stereotypical nerds and geeks who don't know how to hold a conversation, and would rather work on code than interact with others.

This isn't new at all.

I think your point of view is way to alarmist and there is no evidence to support it in the general case. I'm sure there will be cyber-otaku just like everything else. People who only function when immersed in cyberspace, or fetishists who prefer artificial parts to meat. That's just a growth of the tattoo and piercing trend that started in tribal days - there is already some seriously intense body modification being done.

We've been replacing body parts for some time now, and the technology continues to improve. In most cases the replacements aren't as good as healthy natural parts, but that's really a matter of time and money. At one time the very thought of replacing joints was insane - hip, knee, and other joints are routinely replaced now. And the replacements are lasting longer and longer. Early knee replacements wore out after a few years, new ones may last a decade or more, and I expect that eventually they'll last longer than life expectancy.

New artificial limbs can be controlled by nerve impulses, and some of them have crude abilities to sense temperature and pressure. No one would willingly replace a working limb with one - but 50 or 100 years from now? Maybe.

Personally I don't really expect out and out replacement to be a big trend. Rather, I expect there to be enhancements to the meat. Genetic research to limit aging and decay in the systems, growing replacement organs when needed, etc. Perhaps nanotechnology to install systems in place. I expect data jacks will be the most common, since it isn't replacing an existing system but rather adding new abilities - a new sensory channel.

There is no reason for the average person to replace their eyes - but if you're blind or have serious vision impairment, then you might go for it. Perhaps in some special circumstances - a soldier might want night vision, etc. But even that would probably be rare - you'll note that most cyberpunk worlds with widespread replacements are also post-apocolyptic. People get ware to get an edge to survive - unless that happens for real, the motivation to do replacement won't be there.

Some abilities may not require replacement - maybe an image coprocessor for the brain could improve vision, correcting for problems in the eye. Or a chip implanted on the retena could add IR or night vision without altering the appearance or other functions. (That may sound far fetched, but very primative prototype implants have been used in tests to give basic light/dark vision to the blind. Work is ongoing at improving the resolution to provide true sight - the chip stimulates the optic nerve.)

There are already implants to help provide hearing for the deaf or hearing impaired. With time they'll be able to help in more cases, and eventually should be able to better normal human hearing. A small implant that could receive and amplify faint signals, or 'hear' frequencies normally outside the range the ear can pick up are feasible.

Personally I want cyberjacks and that's about it - unless they come up with something to keep me from being fat but lets me eat what I want. Maybe a small implanted bio-reactor to produce power for other implants. ;-)

But seriously, I find typing such a bother - it really limits my interactions. I think FAR, FAR faster than I can type. And I have never found a UI that didn't frustrate me in some way. Speech recognition is not an answer either - I can't talk as fast as I think, and people who know me know how fast I tend to talk. Being able to do things at the speed of thought is what I'm really after. Being able to move things, recode, test, etc, just by thinking about it.

I know such a thing will require leaps in computing power and biotechnology, but I firmly believe it will be possible. The hardest part will be developing an neural interface that a person can learn to use.

I remember someone posting a criticism of UF a while back that I meant to reply to and didn't. One of the complaints was the apparent lack of cyberware... But the key there is apparent. Cyberware is *rampant* in UF by the time of FI - but quality ware is invisible. And it is common, so characters aren't going to comment on it in story. Many people have cyberjacks, and some will have other mods. But only the fetish crowd does the chrome arm thing. And only on some pretty messed up worlds do you find much combat ware.

-MegaZone, megazone@megazone.org
Personal Homepage http://www.megazone.org/
Eyrie Productions FanFic http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
See what I'm selling on eBay

As if we don't have enough problems with people who don't think before they speak. Now they'll have to think before they think.

-Nightmare Butterfly
I can just see the flamewars now....

http://www.eyrie-productions.com/Forum/dcboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=97&forum=DCForumID11&omm=7

The vitriol, I'll note, seems to have thankfully boiled away from this thread.
-Eliot "Did give me a neat idea for a humor piece, though" Lefebvre
-=()=-
We're only given a little time in our lives to waste. Make the most of it.
Electronic Transcendance Productions
Producer of, um, stuff for an unspecified time-period.

Ben and I once discussed Rick Allen--the drummer, not the mech. Even with Omega-3, he didn't regenerate his arm--he replaced it with orbital crystal. And just to show off, he doesn't use it while drumming.

Then again, he can get away with it, because he is older than Glen (who is older than dirt).

--rR

I have to agree with just about everyone here. Everyone is saying the same thing, it's just that some aren't thinking ahead.

First generation interface: realistic, easy to navigate for a beginner, and only changes your thought processes by a little (still 'human-thinking' as some would say), probably depending on what actions you take in this virtual world.

Second generation interface: I'll be damned if I'm willing to put up with reality everywhere I go. As R-Type said, 'it's just a place to get things done, now'. I expect that people who grow up with the neural jacks will get extremely used to a new and very complex interface which would throw newbies into convulsions.

Any language evolves. This is more, even, than a language: it's a whole protocol. What you feel is controlled by it. Anything you do is input to it. it will evolve at a tremendous rate, because you don't want to be stuck in a really simplistic world when you're capable of so much more.

In time, people will think in 'in-human' ways, if you judge humans by the same standards that (er, shoot, closed that window) guy who says people will think inhumanly does. Personally, I think it's not inhuman, it's just social evolution (by that, of course, I mean the evolution of society, not the biological evolution of man-creatures).

-Craig

I already have enough problems relating to human folks because I spend so much time "in the Wired".. and as much as I hate Lain, that's the best way of referring to it that I can think of.

-- Kokuten "Certainly puts new meaning into the term "Jack Off"" Daysleeper

>Now, you could argue that, for economic, political, sociological, or
>whatever reasons, it's extremely unlikely that sufficient resources
>and time will be directed at the problem, at least for the
>forseeable future, and that, as such, it is extremely unlikely that
>the interface capabilities of prosthetics will advance to the stage
>where they are, to their owner, indistinguishable from the real thing
>until and unless dismantled. You could make that argument, and I
>might even agree with it, given humanity's chronic inability to direct
>sufficient resources or time at to do anything worthwhile
>nowadays (where's our moon base? where's our Mars mission? where are
>the L-colonies? where's my robot girlfriend, dammit!).

I actually remember reading an article not too long ago about precisely what was being done in the field of cybernetics... unfortunately, I've long since forgotten the URL, so I'll not quote it for fear of remembering incorrectly. Bottom line, I think that we'll keep making very small forrays into the field in hopes of creating more effective prosthetics, but it'll be quite some time before the field really comes into its own and becomes commonplace. Trinity has it about right - it's been about a century, but there's still no real cyberware to speak of, even in hardtech-obsessed nations like the FSA and Nippon.

As for the moon and Mars, I'd recommend leaking something to CNN about aliens on Mars, then see how fast the public backs us marching off to colonize or whatnot. I'd not want a robot girlfriend, due in no small part to the reaming I'd get when I brought one home. ("Honey, look what I bought!")

>Crap. Sensation is nothing more than electrical signaling. Figure
>out how to duplicate it and you've duplicated it. Period.

My apologies - my statement in the last post seems to have gotten muddled somewhat, either in the interpretation or in being unintentionally unclear to begin with. (I'd wager a bit of both.) My intent was to make clear that the sensation to the arm, the feedback it generated, could be duplicated through simple electrical impulses. To say that we cannot do so now is accurate, but to say that it's not possible to duplicate the feedback at all would be, as you said, horseshit.

>The human body is merely an extremely complex, inefficient, messy
>machine, and any machine can be reverse-engineered, if sufficient
>resources and time are directed at the problem.

Herein lies our argument. I don't buy that the human body is just a very elaborate computer, that it's a piece of machinery that we simply don't understand all the workings of just yet. There is something else, something underlying that makes it different, some level of interaction that keeps it from just being a purely mechanical frame that didn't have the most brilliant design team working on it. Call it metaphysical bullshit if you like - it certainly won't surprise me - but even when every other feature of my right arm can be replicated by a piece of cyberware, I would know the difference. You could drug me, hack off my arm, replace it with a cyberarm, and never tell me a word of it, and I would know that it was not my arm. There are certain frailties that humanity isn't supposed to be able to overcome entirely - we only get one body, one head, two eyes, two arms, et cetera, and while we can replace the functions they perform, I don't believe it will ever be possible to replace them in entirety.

Perhaps I'm just being naive and metaphysical, as this is all purely speculative anyways. Perhaps twenty years from now you'll be sporting a cyberarm and I'll be sighing and writing a check. But I do know that if I had the option, I'd not take the chance. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, and I lose out on the chance to have some really cool cybernetic enhancements. But if I'm right, then the loss far outweighs the benefits. So I'll pass, thanks.
-Eliot "This has given me a certain degree of freedom in dealing with local management" Lefebvre
-=()=-
We're only given a little time in our lives to waste. Make the most of it.
Electronic Transcendance Productions
Producer of, um, stuff for an unspecified time-period.

The damage to my senses is large enough and my weaknesses are infuriating enough that I will gladly trade them off for something which does not tire, which does not weaken, which does not get sick, and which is superior in every way. Just call me the soul-less cyber junkie. But I'll be a soul-less cyber junkie without any physical infirmities and a lot less money than I had before.

-Craig

"The only thing of beauty in that meat you call a body..."
-SHODAN, in reference to your cyberware.

---> Edit to make sense.

I've got some infuriating weaknesses, too. My right wrist gets itself injured constantly. My vision isn't perfect, so I have to wear glasses to drive. I don't have particularly good hearing. I'm still not entirely satisfied with my body's shape or weight after over a year of dieting and weight-lifting.

But I've taken the time to try and improve my body. I've gone out there and improved my looks and my strength, my coordination and agility, through time and effort. I've learned how far I can push my body without it going over its limits, and learned to work within them rather than try to break out from them. I know what I can and cannot do, and even though my body lacks the efficiency and power of a machine, I'd stick with it even in light of the option of fixing all its woes. You see it as a removal of infirmities, I see it as a removal of some things that distinguish every human being from every other human being.
-Eliot "True strength lies not within the removal of flaws, but in their acceptance" Lefebvre
-=()=-
We're only given a little time in our lives to waste. Make the most of it.
Electronic Transcendance Productions
Producer of, um, stuff for an unspecified time-period.

-Craig

Okay... agree with you so far...

> Call
>it metaphysical bullshit if you like - it certainly won't surprise me
>- but even when every other feature of my right arm can be replicated
>by a piece of cyberware, I would know the difference. You could drug
>me, hack off my arm, replace it with a cyberarm, and never tell me a
>word of it, and I would know that it was not my arm.

Now this is crap.

We are more than the body. But the thing that makes us more than just a machine -- the soul, if you will -- is not of the body. The body is, ultimately, a tool for the mind and spirit for interacting with the physical realm, and when infirmities caused by environmental damage or design flaws come into effect, then the tool is less efficient, less effective. There's no mystical connection to your original body parts, and if you built an arm that was indistinguishable from the real thing to all external appearances and in the sensations and response it produced, and then put it in place of the original arm, you would not know that such a thing had been done.

-- Sean --

http://www.thebrokenlink.org The Broken Link 4.0 is live!
"Imagination is more important than knowledge." -- Albert Einstein
"It's not easy being green." -- Kermit the Frog

>Okay... agree with you so far...

Really? Wow. The universe is going askew. ;>

>Now this is crap.

No, this is crap. Or about crap, anyways.

(With apologies to Mr. Schroeck... if I was really clever, I'd have linked to the Tomb Raider movie website.)

>We are more than the body. But the thing that makes us more than just
>a machine -- the soul, if you will -- is not of the body. The
>body is, ultimately, a tool for the mind and spirit for interacting
>with the physical realm, and when infirmities caused by environmental
>damage or design flaws come into effect, then the tool is less
>efficient, less effective. There's no mystical connection to your
>original body parts, and if you built an arm that was
>indistinguishable from the real thing to all external appearances and
>in the sensations and response it produced, and then put it in place
>of the original arm, you would not know that such a thing had been
>done.

See, this is where I disagree with you. No, the soul and the body are not one and the same. But neither are they two separate entities, with no more interaction between the two than between a car and a driver. The two interact in different realms, but both are connected underneath it all, in more of a sense than simply one shuttling the other through the physical realm.

Don't get me wrong - if I lose an arm in an accident, I'll happily take a cyberarm to replace it. I'm not talking about replacing parts that are damaged beyond functionality - I'm talking about removing and replacing parts that are working within their normal parameters, just below the level that their owner wants. Certainly, I'd like perfect vision... but my eyes work fine, just a little buggy. Replacing them with cybereyes would be like ditching my motherboard every time my computer crashed.

(And just to totally throw in some chaos theory, what scientific proof is there that we don't have some mystical connection to our original body parts over cybernetic equivalents? We've got none. Of course, to base an argument off this is simply silly, and the idea is included for consideration purposes only.)
-Eliot "I'll also note that I seem to be the only one who hasn't dismissed someone else's views as crap yet" Lefebvre
-=()=-
We're only given a little time in our lives to waste. Make the most of it.
Electronic Transcendance Productions
Producer of, um, stuff for an unspecified time-period.

Ah, nah, no apologies necessary. In fact I was amused and gratified. Although, yeah, Tomb Raider -- or even better, the D&D movie -- would have been a good alternate.

-- Bob
---------------
"Shinji. Same name as the master key -- well done, Ikari. Shinji can't be copied. Splendid plan." -- Tabris, in Tenshi Muyo! Rei-o-ohki

Glad to hear it. Considering that most of this thread seems to involve me pissing people off, I assumed that it couldn't hurt to cover my bases, and all. ;>

>Although, yeah, Tomb Raider -- or even better, the D&D movie -- would
>have been a good alternate.

Or Hollow Man. Then again, aside from being on a work computer, I'd have to double-check to URL... which would involve actually VISITING one of those sites. So I'm not that brave. ;>
-Eliot "Cool web site, though, Bob" Lefebvre
-=()=-
We're only given a little time in our lives to waste. Make the most of it.
Electronic Transcendence Productions
Producer of, um, stuff for an unspecified time-period.

>There's no mystical connection to your
>original body parts, and if you built an arm that was
>indistinguishable from the real thing to all external appearances and
>in the sensations and response it produced, and then put it in place
>of the original arm, you would not know that such a thing had been
>done.

Well, until you got it caught in a grain thresher or something and saw all the little sparkly bits. Then you'd have a psychotic episode. I wouldn't; I'd be too preoccupied wondering how the hell I got near enough to a grain thresher to get my bionic arm caught in it. But that's because, compared to you, my priorities are skewed. :)

--G.
["Aaaaah! Monster I am lest monster I become!!"]
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, Netadmin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

"Ooo! A sparkly! You're wearing a sparkly!"

------------------------
Chad Collier--I need to watch that again sometime soon...
Digital Bitch
J. Random VFX Company

This wouldn't have been as funny if I hadn't seen that bit of Secret of NIMH on cable recently...

-MegaZone, megazone@megazone.org
Personal Homepage http://www.megazone.org/
Eyrie Productions FanFic http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
See what I'm selling on eBay

All things are possible. Somethings are, however, less mathematically probable thatn others. The probablity that any cybernetic implant, no matter how sophisticated, will receive no complaints that it is in someway not an adequate replacement (regardless of the 'objective' truth) is too low to be calculated give current computer technology.

drakensisthered

So I simply said one of the great trite truths: "There is generally more than one side to a story." - Corwin, Roger Zelazny's 'Courts of Chaos'

And, on top of that, it's completely uneccessary. Read Timothy Zahn's Cobra, David Weber's Fifth Imperium books, or, better yet, S. M. Stirling's Drakon.

Admittedly, the above approach creates problems of its own, but they're soluble.

>Sure, I might have something that's pretty convincingly similar, so
>that for the most part nobody notices the difference. Should I ever
>find myself lacking a real limb, cybernetics would be a welcome
>salvation. But I'd still be missing an arm, and to willingly
>surrender that would be to willingly sacrifice part of me. There's a
>very small list of things that I'll do that for, and becoming a combat
>monstrosity is not one of them.

Maybe ditto, depending on what stage the 'ware was developed to, but reinforced bones, boosted healing and similar goodies are a different matter.

Blessed be.
Nathan Baxter
(jumping in with both feet)