Do you want to be a cyborg?

I'd get my lazy eye replaced with a biomechanical one and have my brains' memory area hooked up so I can remember more and forget less. Added features would enable me to read raw code with it and convert that into software upgrades for the eye. I'd also like to be able to save replays of my dreams for movie nights, where my eye would double as a 1600x1200 projector.
Upgrades could include precision reaction time, ability to record sound and video for inside jobs and enhanced skills for breaking Vegas

- Jolan

Only a slave if your conciousness isn't in control, but... would you trust someone with that?
Interestingly, for those in the know, the last 2 weeks of Doctor Who dealt with exactly this... Hey Brits, under those coditions, would YOU be a cyborg? Or maybe more cool... let's take the Star Trek version... would you be a Borg?
The point is, yes, any implant that's electronic makes you a cyborg in the truest sense, and the implants are upgrades, but at what point do you stop being you? Role playing games like Cyberpunk and Spacemaster, and stories like "Do androids dream of electric sheep" deal with empathy... where is the boundary? An emotion surpresser like Cybus Ind? Complete hive mind like the Borg? or lunacy like Kevin Warwick? You pay your money and you take your choice... while upgrades sound like fun, I think I'd rather let my organic brain stay in control

I wouldn't... There are downsides...

NO! cyborg for me ... i will stay the wolf i am with my love and be his sould mate forever in wolf form ... NO!!metal for me ... to many clanking parts any ways ... and having to deal with rust issues .... lol

Edit : id rather feel flesh not metal any day

Biggest one I can think of... The Cost. Then comes mechanical failure. And setting off metal detectors. And dirty girls with Pubic Rust.

Also- who makes the stuff? If Microsoft- NO WAY! It'd be prone to failure, or "undocumented features". If Apple, also No Way- you'd spend all that money on the prosthetics, then Apple turns around & switches parts, making yours obsolete & nothing would work on it.

I only dream of the day I can be a 50 foot hello kitty robot with nuclear laser beams hidden as Rainbows shooting out of my eyes.

I will not be in the Alpha test group the malfunctioning bionics don't [left][/left][left][/left] sound like fun. However [left][/left]you can augment me up once you have the bugs worked out. Oh I need to go check my mind mail.

David Brin's novel, Clay People, explores the concept fairly well. It's a society where you can download yourself into various temporary bodies, as many at a time as you wish. Each type is optimized for different functions and, at the end of the time period, can be "uploaded" back into you. Those who can handle the reintegration well are at an obvious advantage, and with a time limit on the body, there's incentive to try to return so whatever you've learned can be reintegrated back into the self. It's been a few years since I've read it, but might be worth taking another look at. (IIRC, the main plot, however, was a murder mystery.)

Biomechanics...oooh....*drools*
Anyone read Justina Robson's novels?

Easier and quicker method: record everything you say from this point on until you die. Will the file to someone with access to some sopsticated statistical software. It shouldn't be too hard to construct a frequentist model of your personality that determines likely output statements for almost any given input. A personality black box.

The snag with that is that there are many many things that go on in my mind that effect my actions that are non-verbal. Things that can't even be expressed with words. So the algorithm you speak of would be a poor copy at best.

But then that brings up the whole area of philosophy that deals with the Mind/Brain question. Maybe a new thread?

That's you though... there are some people in these forums for whom all you'd need would be a random mubber generator and a few phrases like "Todays Lindex average is ", or "zOMG The sky is falling", or "ban stipends, they're stealing my profit" ...

Don't forget "selling freebies is (fill in the blank)!!!"

Yup!

I been thinking about this for a few years now, and every time I remember that computers have trouble keeping up with me at the best of times. Imagine waking up in the morning and waiting for Windows to load

But on a serious note, I answered yes because there are so many things that I could do, and a lot of things I can do that I could be doing so much faster.