Well, it made the mainstream news. There's some woman who wants a bionic eye but explicitly cites Blade Runner as an influence.

http://tech.msn.com/news/articlecnet.aspx?...6&GT1=40000




You know, I never figured out why people who lose limbs are always bee-lining straight for the delicate neurological interaction stuff. It would be horrible to lose a limb, but if I did lose, say, and arm, why not just go for a prothetic with a lot of cool and convienient features that your meat arm wouldn't have?

Let's say that I lose my left arm. I could get a replacement arm that isn't necessarily intricate in terms of engineering or anything, but it could have a lot of useful devices in it. I'd want to get a small computer with LCD display and a wireless internet connection. I could use my right arm and a stylus to hit the keys and surf DSF all day on my arm. Since the computer would probably be built custom for the arm, maybe there could be a key I could hit that would automatically put "LOL LOL STFU NOOB LOOL LOL" in a text field. A GPS on the computer would be nice as well.

I don't smoke, but if I did, I'd have a little built in lighter with a refillable fuel compartment. Along the same lines someone who hates insects or spends a lot of time in the outdoors could have a little bug zapper installed in their replacement arm.

Besides for all that, why not put a taser mechanism into the arm, or a OC spray mechanism, or maybe have some kind of derringer built in there? Everyone wants to pick on the handicapped dude until it turns out he has an arm cannon.

As long as I had the same level of control and feeling with my "cyber" arm as I would with a transplant I'd go for the cyber everytime provided that the mantaince wouldn't be so much hassle that it affected my daily life.

There's a sort of a parable in the old sci fi book To Open the Sky by Silverberg. The ultimate punishment for a body-modification cult is the removal of the ability to feel pain, the reason being is that it dooms the person to a slow and horrible degeneration: paper cuts that bleed and get infected because you don't feel them, teeth that rot because you can't feel the cavities, getting burned because you don't feel pain grabbing the pot, a thousand careless injuries that you can't sense and are hard-pressed to avoid. It's also addressed a bit in the old Cybertechnology sourcebook, but one of the reasons to forego cybernetic replacement in favor of organic organs is the full range of feeling available - no phantom limb syndrome, none of the detachment that comes from looking at the world through a pair of trideo cameras, etc.

My friends and I always joked that we'd be first in line for a datajack as long as it came with Tetris...

I've worn glasses all my life(I'd love to get lasik,) and I've always wanted replacement eyes... But then when you really think about it, how would it feel to have those in your sockets? Mentally what happens to you when looking out at the world it looks like watching TV or video game. You'd become desensitized to what you're seeing and detached from the world(I'm basing this just on my own thoughts on the subject.)

The closer it comes to tech reaching the point of mechanical replacement, it begs the question... What does it mean to be Human?

That is one possiblity, but the other is that like all other advancements, humanity will struggle with the changes and then adapt, because personally I don't see well adjusted people "breaking" from installing cyberware anymore then they do from playing violent videogames or even rpgs.

The main reason is identity. People do crazy illogical things to have to bodies they want. That same neural programming that makes us do do everything crash diets to transsexuality, to installing glassses on a bridge piercing, actually prevents most people from turning themselves into robots.

I've known a lot of geeky people who didn't get this. Many of us didn't get into sex or a somatic discipline until later in life. Combined with the aesthetic lifestyle fallows from using computers all day. On top of the diminished positive reinforcement lots of geeks get negative reinforcement around there bodies( ie. 'you're to [fat,skinny,klutzy,ugly]). All this adds up to many geeks having a a much lower level of body identification than 'normal' people. In a day when video gaming is becoming one of the most popular activities in first world countries, and technical skill and knowledge actually confer status in many situations I feel that it is this very alienation from one's own body that still defines the geek as such rather than the emerging type of technologically-savvy, meme-fluent, physically enabled, party-hosting, community-organizing, sexual-romantic, playful intellectual posited by XKCD.

I would say that if your visual clarity is equal or superior to the original eye then you shouldn't notice, because a human is just a cluster of neurons in a chemical soup, everything else is optional. Whatever you plug into that cluster will do something based on how the data is formatted and where you plug it in.

Okay, so there might be some rejection issues in some cases, but we're learning how to deal with those already.

Humor answers that question rather well if not fully.


This is a very good point. One that fits me perfectly apart from my hair there is very little body wise witch i wouldn't mind changing. In some way my body is just a way for me to interact with the world and express my ideas much like there very computer I'm using right now. If given the choice of a life like limb with no addons that mimics an lost one perfectly or one with addtions such as compartments and such I would take the upgraded one every time. If bionic eyes become a possibility I might well replace my left eye as it cant see that well anyway and due to this I normally wear my fringe over it.

I don't think it has much to do with the screen. I think it has to do with the how you relate to the image. A video desensitizes you because you usually don't have any interaction with what is being show to you. Also one of the purest acts of free will is the ability to choice what in your sensorium you focus upon. Modern video images have much less to choice from. They are smaller, so you can't move your head or eyes to "crop" the image" differently. You can't move in to see more of the texture, you can't rotate to see the back side. You can't switch to another sense like touch or smell. I think its lack of detail, size (what "aspect ratio" does a visual cortex have?), and interactivity make are what desensitize with the fallowing lack of simulation and agency. I just know that getting to teleoperate a diving robot was one of the coolest things I've done. I was more fascinated by that crappy black and white screen than any EA game I will ever play. Similarly I think these kinds of operations explain the fascination we have of Google maps. The slippy functionality and zoom, give us back the interaction and ability to chose focus, and the fact that it is a map makes it easy to imagine acting in and on the space we are looking at.



Short answer: A Wittgensteinian set clustered around homo sapian bodies, and enough agency to act in society.

Long answer: Technologies that rewrite the boundaries of humanity such as AI, cybernetics, life support, etc are starting to show us that "human" refers to many things different things. Until extremely recently many unique and powerful properties (such as regression of using tools to make better tools, sapience, information systems, and many physiologic adaptations.) could only be found in homo sapiens. So we naturally call all of these properties human. Only now do we have face up to that collection of properties being just as much an artifact of our perception as any other set. While you can not argue that strong AI are human, it's fairly trivial to argue they should be conferred "human rights". Awareness of this situation forces us to remove "human rights" from sphere of uniquely human. WIMP clones similarly remove the human body from the set. Agents with robots remove tool use. And even weak AI like Fritz remove some of the prestige of the set.
So what does all this mean as far as "What does it mean to be Human?". First, all the properties define the set "human" can be found both in and out of the set. One genome can produce phenotypes on both sides of the human line. Second all members of the set human are made of matter and energy that move in and out of the set. While this doesn't seem like big news (of course people are born and die) technology has now allowed us to envision radically different paths through those properties, like Motoko, The Borg, Neuromancer, Storm Troopers, Terminators etc.
Ironically this does very little to the set of human itself. Wittgensteinian sets are in well defined things in there own way. I know a brain dead vegetable isn't a human anymore. I know an advanced MS patient is human. I know strong AI are in-human, but human-like in a very special way. I know that GMO pigs with human organs are terrifying because of the horror it could degenerate into especially if neural tissue is involved.
The only thing that has really changed is that we can't assume that properties that define human correlate anymore. A living human physiology doesn't imply conscientiousness and vice versa.

Also, why does a cybereye always have to send the information to the brain at "uber" setting? I can see a setting that a person can access to make the image more human (AKA more "fuzzy") and then when you need to have laser sharp vision you change the setting back to uber. I envision it like 4th Edition Wired Reflexes. When you need super speed you trigger them and when you want to be human you turn them off.

Uber versus fuzzy mostly has to do with the brain and not what the eye cyber or biological puts down the pipe.

I was instantly reminded of Mr. Igoe's bionic arm from the movie Innerspace.

This is the kind of pro con discussion thats important for understanding how cybernetics are viewed in SR, and how they will be viewed in the future(it's only a matter of time people.) The fact is, there will be a difference between even the best cyber part and a organic part, cybernetics and computers are digital, and our brain is analog. Digital can get close to representing analog, but by definition you can never get a perfect analog experience from digital. Even if you can't consciously notice a difference between your real eye and your cyber eye, there will be some detachment that occurs from cybernetic vision because no matter how many trillions of pixels it gives you, it's not perfect because the real world doesn't work in pixels.

Actually the work that has been done suggests that we will be able to replicate vision and hearing to a level where the user does not notice. natural eyes do actually see in pixels (each photoreceptive cell is a pixel). Even natural hearing is in finite quantifiable parts (the hair cells).

If the numbers of sensors in a cybereye/ear meets or exceeds the number of cells that normally do the job, and the processor sends a correctly formatted signal down the nerves to the brain then you are good to go.

Related research being done today into discovering the exact details of the proper signal format for the brain involves useing biological eyes as cameras. One project has been able to put an implant in animals that records the signal in the optic nerve and sends a picture of what the animal sees to a computer. Once we know the details of what is transmitted by the optic and aufitory nerves, it is only a matter of time until we can replicate the signal to the point where the brain cannot detect the difference.

Similar work has been done with prosthetic legs, using pressure sensors in the feet and surface contacts at the stump, signals can be sent to nerves that used to go to those parts of the foot. After some time wearing such a prosthetic the user simply feels where there foot is, and that is with today's very crude (by SR standards) interface levels.

Even more fun is the work with primates that shows you can learn to control more than two arms at once. Sensors implanted into the motor cortex can be used to control external robotic arms. Once the user gets used to controlling the robotic arms, they can do so while also using their natural arms at the same time to do separate things. (of course the primates have not told us what that feels like, and to my knowledge similar work has not yet been done with humans. (there are legal restriction on what can be done to the brain of a healthy subject)

Oh WR you card, you make me cry tears of mirth.


Basically, people want to look human. The majority of people are more vain than utilitarian.


Actually, phantom limb syndrome can be treated simply by fooling your brain into thinking you have an arm. The common treatment for those missing an arm, is to place their existing hand against a mirror, and imagine moving their other, missing, arm's hand to touch their fingers together. I imagine this could also be achieved with a motive prosthetic.


Actually, they're designing the cybereye as we speak, and it wires directly into the optic nerve, so it would be like looking out through a natural eye. The biggest hurdle they face is not getting a cybereye to work, but getting parts that will last a human lifetime in an eye-socket. The cyberear is already a reality. Can't find a link to the article at the moment, sorry.


That's the thing though, the eye does see in pixels and frames, the mind just blends them into a seamless whole. Try closing your eyes, then flicking your eyes open and closed, once, very quickly. You'll notice the image of the world you were looking at takes a moment to fade. That demonstrates fairly obviously that we see in frames.

Personally, I want a second pair of (normal) arms. Or a tail. I'd say wings, but human bodies weren't really designed for the stresses of flying: there would be health issues in the long term.

cyber eyes are currently call cochlear implants

If I had to choice analog or digital to describe human vision, I would choice digital with no hesitation. However using terms like frame rate is a little miss leading. The brain takes several passes over the images that we see. Those passes happen at different rates so in a sense we actually have several frame rates.

No matter how you look at it, our ability to see(or hear) is not digital. Even though we do in fact see in pixels and frames(in a manner of speaking), that doesn't change the fact that there is an effectively infinite amount of variation of light and color our eyes can process while a digital system has a distinct limit to the number of different possibilities it can process. Sure that number may be far greater then the number we can consciously process, but the fact is you are inputting a digital output(the cybereyes) into an analog input(the brain), and no matter how advanced the digital component gets, there will be something lost in the transition, which could theoretically lead to a disconnected feeling even though consciously you can notice no difference.

Take for example a tape adapter, the kind used to turn a digital sound source(such as an mp3 player) into an analog one(magnetic data on a cassette tape). Even if you buy a very high quality adapter, you still lose some sound quality as the adapter cannot perfect ally translate the digital feed into an analog feed for the tape player to read. Even if the technology gets quite advanced, a perfect conversion is simply impossible, you can approach perfection, but never reach it.

Now, I'm not saying cybereyes would be a bad idea, they could greatly help blind people, and could even get to the point where people with normal eyesight can use them to improve their eyesight, but there will always be something lost. It could be something that is so tiny that we might never notice it(or at least the cast majority of people won't) but it will be there.

That'd be cyber ears.

.... duh! The thread was full of so many eyeballs!

Let me try again.
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cyber ears are currently call cochlear implants

Actually, I suspect the reason we don't install crazy cool stuff in our cyberlimbs is three-fold;

1) Everything currently is limited by batteries. Batteries are heavy, and not especially efficient. Running a computer off your arm requires a good deal of battery weight that could be better used for other purposes (such as say movement).

2) While the market for prosthetics is small, it is still large enough that a certain amount of standardization is permitted, allowing for some degree of savings. How much do you suppose it costs to modify a lighter so it flicks based off some funny action, and fits into a custom slot on an arm? Probably a lot, especially compared to the cost of, well, just having a lighter. Similarly, most of the things in your house are designed for people with two functional, approximately human hands. How does having a lighter aid you in turning a steering wheel? In holding a knife?

3) Weight in general is pretty high with this. If you see the straps required, they're substantial. Anything that can be done to reduce weight is generally done.

So we remove the digital layer between the two analog layers. It's counterproductive to have a digital layer that reads each element or row in turn, as every pixel in a biological eye operates all the time. We hook each light sensor up to the apropriate nerve activator. If we want, we can hook up some fancy nanoelectronics to smooth the output to reduce noise.

You don't even have to use every single nerve. If I recall correctly, the (working) model they're using at the moment uses ~100 electrodes to replace the couple-million sensors we normally have.