←back to thread

25 points surprisetalk | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.566s | source
1. exmadscientist ◴[] No.45673227[source]
One of the other important points about rooms and cyborgs is what partial participation looks like.

If I don't like the room, I'm able to get up and leave. It might be difficult and annoying, and I might have to end up in the middle of the woods or desert or something, but I can do it. (Yes, we are increasingly making this harder and harder to do, by cyborging "the system" itself -- think things like the demise of cash, or the requirements for digital ID cards, or ... -- but you get the idea.)

If I'm a cyborg, how do I leave? Can I leave? Do I even control myself anymore? Being a cyborg sounds great if I control my "wetware". Which I probably do not. (Do you control the computing device you're reading this message on? Really? The Linux kernel being open source might be really nice (it is really nice), but even if you have the de jure ability to control it, do you have the practical ability to do so? And then there's the hardware. Any way you trace the hardware, you'll end up with quartz wafers from Spruce Pine. Do you have any way to replicate that?) There is no way in hell I'd want to be someone else's cyborg, which means that with the state of the tech world, I don't want to be a cyborg at all.

replies(2): >>45673675 #>>45677825 #
2. hrimfaxi ◴[] No.45673675[source]
I don't think the average person can appreciate the implications of trusting trust in a cyborg/augment world.
3. aspenmayer ◴[] No.45677825[source]
The Ghost in the Shell films and series explore these ideas in a much more nuanced way than I can fit in a comment. Your comment is more thought-provoking than I can hope to do justice with my own, and your words reminded me of Major Kusanagi’s forlorn acknowledgment of her own cyborg body no longer being her own, but rather being government property. After her body’s service life was over, she might get overhauled as long as she continues to serve Section 9, but after she leaves, what would she even be left with, after the classified technology was exhumed from her body? Who would she even be, if her memory of her life of service were also part of her cyberbrain, and subject to recall or extinguishment upon retirement?