Question American views on enhancement via technology

This article pulls in some information from a Pew research center survey... there are links to the original posts on the Pew Research Center's site...

gizmodo.com/most-americans-are-still-fea...anist-bra-1784278230

Interesting. As well as about what I expected, with the state of science fiction being what it is.

There are two contexts that need to be added to this.

One is Carson's lecture to Loophole about the long-term power balance involving gadgeteers and devisors. While mutants and mages have lots of short-term advantages, they lose out to the long-term advantages that technology brings. The improvements that gadgeteers create can be used and understood by baseline humans.

The second is the attitude to proprietary technology vs. Open-Source HardWare. Would you really want an implant that could only be serviced by a single company?

If this was an implant that is essential for keeping you alive, then you would essentially be a slave. Tied to the whims of the power-gamers in that company for the rest of your life.

It's that understandable fear-of-domination which will end up limiting the spread of technology.

The comments about Cyber-Tribe and, the problems that they have with their situation, is a good example of what happens when you get something implanted, but don't really understand what it is, or how it works.

Maybe it's my engineering background that stops me from being fearful about technology, but it's my experiences as an anarchist that lets me understand how that technology can be used in both positive AND negative ways.

[One thing i have noticed about the way i read stories/situations, is that while the main characters carry the plot, it's the minor characters that give the flavour of the setting, and set the overall tone of the work. So far, so Stanislavski... ]

An interesting comparison is the article about Huxley's Brave New World, http://io9.gizmodo.com/why-brave-new-world-is-no-longer-the-terrifying-dystopi-1731043972

It describes the reaction-du-jour about Huxley's setting, as the reactions from the specific cultural context that Huxley lived in.

Some chewy and relevant ideas, especially seen from the current events, where a lot of people's basic reactions are being created by the joblessness that is being caused by un-equally owned automation.

The use of the tools for the confirmation of the economics of Scarcity, when they should be used to create the economics of Abundance.

Lots of idea's to chew over for breakfast, TYVM.

My $0.02.

The third thing listed, physical enhancement, is too close to the PED and Blood Doping used in sports to be currently accepted.

The first is too close to the current debates about aborting fetuses with genetic "flaws" or modifying fetuses for desired traits.

The second is running into the scifi tropes of Khan from Star Trek, enhanced supermen trying to take over the world, or driving them into homicidal maniacs, and all those fun things.

Lots of ways going cyborg can cause problems. Ads, hacking, tracking, etc., and with implants the Blue Screen of Death gets a bit more literal. But then again, there's a lot that can go wrong with our stock biology as well. I don't have a problem with improving upon the base model human being. I mean, it's not like we haven't already been doing that for thousands of years. I sure wasn't born with shoes on my feet or Wikipedia at my fingertips.

Actually, all the really nasty things that could go wrong as a Beta-test cyborg pale compared to this one nasty little paradox: Either the implant works or it doesn't.

If the implant doesn't work, then you have all the problems that come from having a wonky bit of inorganic material implanted in your body, and you've got to have it carved out, AND you've got to cope with the fact that you've got this cavity in your body where it used to be.

If it does work, then you've got the edge for maybe five years, ten years tops. And then you're stuck on a treadmill where you're used to having an edge, but you've got to keep upgrading to keep that edge, because the technology keeps improving. This is not upgrading your desktop people, this is upgrading your body and/or mind. So you will come to a point where you've over-complicated your own body and/or you've fallen so far behind the tech curve that your edge is a liability. As I put it in 'Professional Courtesy': "There's nothing more pathetic than an obsolete cyborg."

Bek D Corbin wrote: Actually, all the really nasty things that could go wrong as a Beta-test cyborg pale compared to this one nasty little paradox: Either the implant works or it doesn't.

If the implant doesn't work, then you have all the problems that come from having a wonky bit of inorganic material implanted in your body, and you've got to have it carved out, AND you've got to cope with the fact that you've got this cavity in your body where it used to be.

If it does work, then you've got the edge for maybe five years, ten years tops. And then you're stuck on a treadmill where you're used to having an edge, but you've got to keep upgrading to keep that edge, because the technology keeps improving. This is not upgrading your desktop people, this is upgrading your body and/or mind. So you will come to a point where you've over-complicated your own body and/or you've fallen so far behind the tech curve that your edge is a liability. As I put it in 'Professional Courtesy': "There's nothing more pathetic than an obsolete cyborg."

Of course that assumes that the cyborg in question is reliant on that edge, rather than using it as a tool and adjusting tactics rather than pure upgrades.

This. As much as I despise what happened to Cyberpunk, the referee's manual DID have some good points. A lot of the really elite were LOW cyber... and they explained how it worked.


And were right.
Wasn't the metal, was the skills.

This brings to mind a translated interview with Stanislaw Lem that I read some years ago, where he comments on humanity and technology. He said its like a man jumping from the top of a 50 storey building. Someone sticks out his head on the 30th floor and asks the first man how things are going, and he waves and gives a thumbs up and says "It's going great so far!".