kasaron:

My problem with most common cyborg characters is threefold.

One, don’t leave raw machinery out in the wind.

Two, don’t disregard the importance of, and the viability of, modifying the body’s systems instead of just bolting shit onto flesh.

Three, stop treating them like they’re either conflicted about their humanity or wickedly evil/perverse/have an amputation fetish. 

For starters;

Harden their bones with carbon nanostructures.

Reinforce their tendons and skin with cell-wall and tissue proteins synthesized based off of Golden Orb Weaver silk.

Increase their blood oxygen saturation and reduce their resting heart rate, increase the amount of and efficiency of mitochondria in skeletal muscles.

Use TCS to improve learning ability, use other forms of neuropathy to improve dynamic visual acuity.

Use scleral implants/surgery to widen the focus distance of their eyes, and wavefront ablation surgery to improve eyesight and lens clarity.

Add silicone pads with rare-earth magnets embedded in them to provide electrosensory abilities.

Use cochlear implants to protect their hearing from loud noises, but also improve their hearing sensitivity, both through minor amplification as well as through a steroid biogel applied to the cochlea.

Flush/clear the vestibular system and use nerve-growth-promoting biogel to increase sensitivity of vestibular sense of balance. 

Add a subvocalization system to the layrnx; a small peizo element with some sort of transmission system.

This is just shit I’m thinking up off the top of my head. If you write a cybernetic character, don’t neglect the fleshy parts. Recognize the ability to improve and modify them. 

Remember they aren’t just human meatbags with metal bolted on; they’re a unified system of parts, mechanical and organic, and those parts need to be able to keep up with eachother. 

bigredm38:

kasaron:

bigredm38:

kasaron:

Consider this.

In a transhuamnist/cyberpunk setting; most people probably have an AI adjutant. A sort of assistant/virtual person that manages a lot of your day to day stuff, similar to Jarvis for Tony Stark.

Some people probably trade adjutants, or order special ones from boutique sellers, while others make theirs (mostly) for scratch using a basic “wire-frame” that lets them basically answer hundreds of yes/no questions to come at a rough persona that’s compatible.

Some people teach their adjutants how to shitpost; weirdly savvy but also incredibly absurd niche posts arise from these AI’s, some being given “incorrect” data for a lark. 

Other people treat them like a combination of a personal assistant and private journal; and some, some spend so long working with and on their AI that the AI themselves become basically people. Arguments online over the legality and ethics of such AI abound.

Some people pay their AI; though since the AI don’t really need anything, and all their possible “goods” are digital, this mostly ends up being things like new hardware, faster internet connection, and subscriptions to newsfeed sites. 

AI’s become a synbiotic thing; not ruled, nor ruler, but hand in hand with the people they work with. It’s not always perfect, but nothing in this world ever really is. And amidst the dry humor of robot uprisings, threats about pouring grape soda on a console, and “accidentally” missed meetings; there’s a sort of love, a kindness there.

Your AI becomes yours, it becomes as much a part of you as your skin, your conscience, it is a member of your life in a silent, almost intrinsic way, and in the reverse, you are a member of it’s life, a host, a benefactor but also a source of agency in the world. 

There’s obviously be people who despise this, for one reason or another, be it because they see AI as being essentially “slaves” to humans, or because of a fear of the aforementioned robot apocalypse. Tensions rise in some parts of the world, as laws get established banning AI adjutants, or restricting their complexity. Others rally for AI’s to be sovereign, living in the ether of cyberpsace. Some AI take this offer and run with it, but many, if not most, see themselves as mentioned before; as symbiotic organisms, neither servile nor master, living alongside humans and with them, and being part of them.

AI’s become like “living memories;” the last flitting bits of the human mind to remain after death, able to pass on ghostly wishes, thoughts, and even curses.

Some assume identities, either through grief or out of habit; performing tasks and handling meetings and paying the bills long after their host has died. Some even declare themselves to be the person who died; that they “transferred over.” Tabloid pages abound about theories on who is alive and who is just an AI ghost now, in a digital age where voices, and even whole bodies can be recreated in photo-realistic quality by any hobbyist with a fast enough computer. 

Eventually, the line may even be so blurred we stop noticing the difference between these “ghosts” and the people we meet. 

Dude, Mass Effect already has VIs (What’s that line from the Shepard VI Mouse made?), and Halo already has “smart” and “dumb” AI.

This is something somewhat like Cortana, but more integrated and more effectual. 

Imagine something that’s sort of like a second, smarter conscience; something that remembers your meetings, hell, can preemptively make the meetings based on what you have done before, as if it were you. 

It’s not something really meant to be a copy of you; it’s like a part of you. An extension of your identity. I’m just spitballing that it’s likely that eventually it could become a copy of you, or at least pass a sniff test to be your copy. 

It’d also be something incredibly common. Like smartphone levels of common. Anyone who can afford one would have one, and probably upgrade it over time, depending on how it manifests. 

That’s actually more like the VIs. IIRC lots of people in that universe use them with their omni-tools (think of a cross between a smartphone, a Leatherman, and a wrist mounted 3D printer) and their terminals (computers). (Sorry, don’t know how much you’ve gotten into the Mass Effect universe (pre-Andromeda).) At least when dealing with the meetings and what-not.
(and that would also be kinda what dumb AIs in Halo do (thought on a ship scale?)? @uss-edsall?)

the second conscience/copy sounds more like Cortana/smart AI.

kasaron:

An argument I’ve heard regarding transhumanism is that “after a certain point, you aren’t human any more.” and I’d like to very strongly squint at that assertion.

You are not the same “human” that grew up 800 yeas ago; both in mind and in body; your genetic code is actively changing and being changed by environment and other effects. You are stronger (yes, stronger) healthier, taller, and more intelligent on average than these “great ancient peoples” everyone seems to love to mystify.

Humanity is shaped by it’s ability to overcome it’s own flaws through technology. Whether that’s something as primitive as a spear made from sharpened wood, all the way up to a cybernetic enhancement or nootropic drug. 

Humanity, I would argue, isn’t a “thing” unto itself so much as it is a “story,” a narrative of a mass of individuals, all whom are influenced by and in turn influence eachother and their environment. All you are is the sum of those experiences through time, going so far back as the first cells that were on this earth.

Tackling the concept of “what is human,” or “what is an individual,” are things we should take a hard look at; being able to describe existence as it is, in simple, plain words (or hell, in mathematical proofs) will insulate us from trespasses should we ever devlop truly Artificial Intellects, or reach the singularity in some other way.

toxic-spill:

Sometimes, it seems like having my roots in transhumanism puts me at odds with the crowd here on tumblr, even if the troubles are mostly contextual.  Right now I’m going through some intellectual struggle because I’ve seen people react poorly to the statement that deafness should be eradicated, and I’m not sure if that’s because I’m lacking context or if there is a very fundamental difference in ideologies.

I do believe that deafness should be eradicated, but I don’t believe that it should be eradicated through eugenics and other unethical means.  My vision for the future is one in which the technology behind the cochlear implant is such that it fully replicates human hearing, is made freely-available to anyone with hearing loss, and installing such an implant is simple enough to be considered routine.

I believe the same when it comes to replacing lost limbs with sophisticated mechanical replacements, restoring lost sight through the creation and installation of sophisticated cameras linked to the optic nerve, creating nanocarbon replacements for destroyed or degenerative bones, and using synthetic superconductors to bridge spinal damage.  Hell, while we’re at it, let’s go whole-hog and make organ transplants obsolete through either synthetic or cultured organic replacements.

All this stems from my belief that everyone should be able to live the full human experience, nature and fate be damned.

fnord888:

Forget morphological freedom, intelligence enhancement, even immortality. The true promise of transhumanism is finally eliminating poop.