Would you become human 2.0?

[Lark]

This relates to the question I asked elsewhere about the robocop style technology, imagine that money and resources are no prospect or problem, imagine that its all an open choice, you can become human 2.0, replace your biological systems and phsique for a mechanical one which will last much longer, do you do that? What is it equivalent to? Do you lose your humanity if you become a cyborg? Or is it like suggesting there is something unnatural about augmenting the human being already with things such as clothes or transport like bicycles or cars or boats etc.?

 

[Faye]

I wouldn't want to be robocop. He is one step removed from a brain in a vat.

I would be willing to make myself partially cyborg to extend my life. Like if I had to have an artificial heart or something, I'd do it. I still want to basically keep this body though as much as possible.

 

[Dave Fallon]

Sounds eerily like my favorite movie, The Ghost in the Shell. What is it really human about someone? Is it the skin and muscles and bones?

I don't think I am against augmentation. I don't know if "natural" applies in terms of a human, or at least not the dichotomy of natural vs. mechanical. We simply can't go back to being animals, but perhaps our current consciousness is as much a part of nature as the world around us. And if that is so, I don't think any sort of augmentation is going too far so long as it doesn't replace our consciousness or diminish it.

 

[rachelbaker99]

I don't know...I think it all depends on your reasons for doing it. Maybe the person wants to extend his or life by a few years so they can live to see the growth of their grandchildren or help see their children through a tough time. Maybe a parent wants to give their child some sort of mechanical augmentation which will allow them to stay alive. I think those are perfectly good reasons for mechanical augmentations to a person's body. But just adding for adding's sake...just replacing parts of the human body with ones which will appear more "attractive" by some temporary cultural standard, or some sort of "improvement" to the physical condition which will allow a person to live a longer life for no reason other than "because we can"...that's wrong. But undoubtedly people will still try to do it.
I think as humans we can accept those resources which are available to us if they are necessary to our survival in the world, but I think we also have a responsibility to remember where we came from, to remember that there are things outside our control and that we are all a part of the nature around us. We are all descendants of the most basic pieces of matter that make up the Earth, and we are the result of a long, fluid evolution of the connections which come together to create consciousness/self-awareness. We have the ability to try things just because "we can" - to try to improve upon ourselves or our condition by making everything "bigger" and "better"...but more often than not these are empty gestures which alienate us from ourselves and strip us from the parts of us that make us beautifully human. Exploring is different - exploring our own capacity for the understanding of the maths and the sciences and building a history of the world around us. But using new knowledge for profit or power, rather than using our resources to aide ourselves and each other out of love, is just sad.

 

[muir]

Ok this is the transhumanism agenda i've been talking about....Lark you really do know how to hit on those New World Order agendas don't you?

transhumanism is where the black lodge want to take us because the black lodge don't actually enjoy the warmth of human contact...they are already feeling like robots so they don't mind the idea of giving up their biological bodies which they are out of touch with anyway

They will say that they are the future and that they are evolution, but really their future is the borg

 

[Lark]

Sounds eerily like my favorite movie, The Ghost in the Shell. What is it really human about someone? Is it the skin and muscles and bones?

I don't think I am against augmentation. I don't know if "natural" applies in terms of a human, or at least not the dichotomy of natural vs. mechanical. We simply can't go back to being animals, but perhaps our current consciousness is as much a part of nature as the world around us. And if that is so, I don't think any sort of augmentation is going too far so long as it doesn't replace our consciousness or diminish it.

I thought about this in relation to the Space Hulk/Space Crusade/Games Workshop Warhammer mythos too, in the beginning the power armoured Space Marines were basically just armoured knights in space, the orders wore power armour and that was that, as the mythos has developed it has had genetic engineering, physical engineering, ie two hearts, stuff like that, in part oft necessity because the armour is theoretically unweildly, heavy and huge but its worked up to the point were pretty much its a man machine an cyborg now.

 

[Lark]

In Dr Who the cybermen have become a something like a society possessed by the augmentation idea, at least with the most recent genesis of the cybermen feature, I dont like the new Dr Who series' but it was an interesting idea. They were originally meant to be something more like the Borg in star trek.

 

[muir]

I thought about this in relation to the Space Hulk/Space Crusade/Games Workshop Warhammer mythos too, in the beginning the power armoured Space Marines were basically just armoured knights in space, the orders wore power armour and that was that, as the mythos has developed it has had genetic engineering, physical engineering, ie two hearts, stuff like that, in part oft necessity because the armour is theoretically unweildly, heavy and huge but its worked up to the point were pretty much its a man machine an cyborg now.

Expect the black lodge to subliminally convince us that we should all merge with machines

They will present robots and machinery as harmless, beneficial and in a favourable light in films, advertising, TV programmes, pop music videos etc etc

This is all pre-programming to prepare people to willingly accept the micro chip implants that they want to stick into us so that they can more thoroughly control us

 

[Eventhorizon]

No but I certainly would be on board for biological enhancement. IE more intelligence, longer life etc...

 

[myself]

Sure is something creepy about merging with machines. I'm not the most informed on this issue but I can see a trans-human agenda is being pushed, the programming is obvious.

People think this stuff is cool, like nuclear power and genetically modified organisms. It'd be wise to consider consequences when tampering with nature.

With a little imagination, one can guess how this might turn out to be a bad thing.

But people get so excited over the idea of being hyper connected to technology... it's weird to see people swallowing all of this so easily.

 

[Cornerstone]

Yeah...no. Machines are for utilising, not for being...for me, at least.
Besides, I believe in a higher aspect, a soul, that will leave any vessel it is done with...organic or mechanical.

 

[gd65h8as7]

I believe that transhumanism will take root in the future, as of now, I would refuse to alter myself digitally.

 

[the]

In Dr Who the cybermen have become a something like a society possessed by the augmentation idea, at least with the most recent genesis of the cybermen feature, I dont like the new Dr Who series' but it was an interesting idea. They were originally meant to be something more like the Borg in star trek.

I don't like how the borg were "humanized" towards the end of Star Trek ds9.

 

[Lark]

I don't like how the borg were "humanized" towards the end of Star Trek ds9.

I didnt like the way in which both the cybermen and the borg became "monarchist" possessing leaders, hierarchy and a pseudo-privileged chain of command, I know that perhaps that was necessary because of the stories they wanted to tell but I thought that was not at all what make them distinctive in the first place.

In relation to the Borg specifically I thought that they went from emotionless biomechanical virus spreading through the universe to a sort of pseudo-fascist chauvinistic supremacist movement overnight. There's people who're fans who've told me this was meant to be a commentary upon post-communist regimes degenerating into ethno-nationalist war zones divided among supremacist camps. I didnt like that at all.

The cybermen were among the original "humanoids" which terrified me when I was a kid, along with the creature in the Iron Maiden posters "Dreddy" and the "monster" cyborg at the end of Superman three (did anyone else think there was a mad change of pace in that movie? Whacky comedy with the assistance of Richard Prior to techno-horror story). They were meant to have that same virus quality as the original borg but then the Daleks developed kings or prime daleks too and they were meant to be a kind of "revolutionary cells" structure in the first instance, just killing machines with no leader or centre or later with rival factions from different time lines.

It could be the fate of those sorts of AI baddies over time that writers just imagine them more and more human as time goes on.