I'd want the full package, but I'd need to be conscious for the brain part. Not 100% how to do that, but any break in consciousness for any type of brain "transfer" is going to drive the existential crisis of if the new robot brain is me or if the corpse that used to hold everything that was me is me. I feel like if I'm able to maintain consciousness through maybe some sort of nanomachine changing small parts of your brain at a time I can reasonably convince myself I'm me once the process is said and done.
i enjoy being able to touch and feel things, and enjoy being healthy, so probably nothing that seriously impacts my senses or health
In theory, I wouldn't hesitate one second to replace a substantial amount of my body with chrome — legs, arms, internal organs, eyes, etc — but I think actually going through with removing a healthy bodypart that I didn't hate and has served me well enough would be difficult. Nevertheless I don't think I'd really regret having gotten it done, so it'd just be like any other big scary surgery.
I don't think I'd want to do whole-body biotech upgrades like increasing muscle density or nervous system efficiency or whatever, because that effects a lot of things, so it's both more invasive and could have a lot more accidental unintended consequences. I'd probably start with replacing my left arm with a cybernetic one, since that's my off hand so I won't miss it as much if something goes wrong. Then use that as a platform to tinker and experiment and decide if I want to go further.
As for what kind of chrome I'd want to chip — I want the simplest, sturdiest, most robust thing that can possibly work, something I can understand as completely as possible, something that I can at least somewhat repair and upgrade myself, something that's well-known for reliability. Nothing super flashy with a lot of moving parts so its flimsy and unreliable, I want the PineTime or ThinkPad T420 of cyberware. And of course I'd flash it with open source firmware and remove all the corpo software and tracking I could!
I'd be a lot more careful about modifying my brain, for two reasons.
First of all, my theory of personal identity / consciousness is that the sense of coherent, singular identity doesn't come from a single, constant set of essential characteristics — whether physical or psychological — but from there being a sufficient resemblance between yourself prior to any given change and yourself after any given change, and a coherent self-narrative pathway from one to the other so that you can reconcile the two. Yourself at 20 and yourself at 35 can have completely different interests, beliefs, neural pathways, memories (our memories falsify over time, after all), and whatever else, but it's still you — how? Because you got there by a step by step process where you remained you between each change, and so by the transitive property, you're still you at the end, even if you're completely different now. If A ≈ B, and B ≈ C, and C ≈ D, then A ≈ D, even if A and D are completely different, because they've got this web of other things connecting them. Thus, if I'm going to maintain my sense of being myself, instead of accidentally killing myself off, I'm going to have to do any modifications of my brain slowly, step by step, and adjust to each one before getting the next one.
Which works out, because of my second point: if an implant in your brain goes wrong, its WAY, WAY, WAAAAAY worse than if something goes wrong with your body. Like, brain damage is no joke kids, I'm dealing with the fallout of it right now and it is not fun. And of course, as we all know, tech fails. A lot. It's buggy as shit. It's often pushed out the door before it's ready. It has vulnerabilities. So I'd want to keep the brain mods minimal if I did any at all — tried and true, tested, resiliant, as simple as possible, and not connected to the 'net.
I feel like an ill-equipped defective robot now, so I'd have my brain put into a mechanical body if it had nerve connection and took care of nutrients/respiration/immunity etc better/easier than now. Especially if I could be the size of a toaster but hook into bigger/different forms/devices easily. Also give me VR-headspace downtime.
I'd go for cryonics too if I could, if there was some contract with anybody that I'd be helping with betterment rather than profit. Sea or space would be cool.
Transmit the message to the receiver
Hope for an answer somedayI would prefer less invasive stuff in general, like having a touch screen on my skin, or having substance scanners and shit. As my body degrades with age I would want to enhance it tough, to the point of reaching digital immortality.
I tend to think it's important to feel vulnerable in our flesh and learning were we came from, before growing to be more than human.
Based on my current work, I think I'd like to have something installed that would translate languages to something I would recognise and then something that would allow me to speak another language without having to learn it. It would make my work much easier.
From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the Blessed Machine. Your kind cling to your flesh, as though it will not decay and fail you.
I think I would only go as far as I can understand the tech myself since it would make me open to a lot of new vulnerabilities (hacking, warranty issues…) and depending on how invasive the procedure is. My eyes are fine and my body is too for the moment so I would probably start augmenting at an older age. But if we enter an age of cognitive augmentations I would definitely start there since if you wouldn’t “keep up” you would be left behind. Imagine how people with faster computation times would live in this world compared to others (silicon VS flesh) I believe it would be similar to high frequency trading where every second counts but just implicating all aspects of life…
Glad you mentioned the hardening aspect, because that’s definitely something I would have to consider. My adoption of cyberware is based on the assumption that the systems have been hardened against run-of-the-mill hacking (although probably not immune to Netrunners), and they would have to be something that doesn’t require a warranty or ongoing “rental” fee. There would always be updates and new versions of course, but the original systems should work at the installed level until they are damaged or their owner dies. A “Repo Men” timeline (where organs are repossessed if you can’t pay for them) would make me very reticent to do cyberware.
Full package. Replace everything you can, doc. Done with flesh's limits. Immortality through tech.
Nothing in my brain. Anything else is fair game, but I'd prefer to remain mostly human-looking. A "sleeper build", so to speak. I'd probably focus on improving sensory acuity and strength/resiliency.
I would fix my slightly myopic eyes (even though I could do that already I haven’t got round to it), and probably get some chips implanted to maximise brain power.
All the way. I've just found someone irl to start putting implants under my skin, and that's already more exciting to me than anything else in my life. I'm not very tied to being made of meat, so as soon as I can legally have my left arm replaced with a robotic prosthetic that functions just as well or better, I will.
Are you talking about https://dangerousthings.com/ ?
I just got my first couple implants a couple months ago now. They're pretty great! My advice though, make you have a plan to actually use them in day-to-day life.
I have one tag as a clone as my fob to get into work, and another tag I use with my smart home stuff. My favorite is a sensor I have hidden behind the siding on my house that opens my garage.
Something I want to do is become a scannable art gallery. I plan to get cybernetic panel tattoos, and I think it would be extremely interesting for each panel's "Access Port", or what have you, to have an NFC implanted under it so it would actually be scannable.
It would take you to a web page featuring vector art of the piece, a high quality photo of the piece, the artist's name, time taken, when it was done, where it was done, etc. I've never seen it done before, but it's also super expensive in both directions, so I'm just gonna try and get it done with what means I can.
Ideally, I would get a design, work out where it's going, talk about having an implant injected into the location, and then work out how to design the scannable area. After the injection site heals, the tattoo would be done.
Also, yes, I'm referring to Dangerous Things.
I've just found someone irl to start putting implants under my skin
That is really exciting, what're you gonna implant?
Initially some simple RFID/NFC chips. If I can get one, I want to have a temperature chip implanted. Would be nice to know my exact temp when needed.
I would replace any and every part of my body given that it was a meaningful upgrade. wouldn't change out my eyes for current tech, but if I could zoom in hell yeah I'd do it in a heartbeat
Imagine not only being able to zoom in, but also to see better at night. Be able to see stars and various nebulae without the use of a telescope. Also being able to see at different light wavelenghts. It would be amazing.
Add heat vision and other features while we're at it as well.
If I could be in a fully ideal synthetic/robot body I would.
As for the whole brain-consciousness issue, and if I can go as fictional as I want, I'd let the equivalent of fluid nanobots very VERY slowly replace my brain cells with electronics. I'm talking 5-10 years. That way there's no real debate on if my "true" self died during the transfer to an artificial brain.
Oh, there's still a real debate, Theseus.
