I want to be a cyborg but after seeing how tech, especially software, has developed (like, I don’t even really want to buy a new car because how tf am I gonna fix it), I don’t think I can trust it. Imagine if your ears’ firmware just stops being supported.
Any cybernetics would have to be built for me by a hobbyist with a workshop full of Raspberry Pis or something
Open source fitmware or nothing.
Fitmware = Wetware?
I want an open source electric car.
I would download a car.
You didn’t pay your subscription for your enhanced eyes, so you woke up blind this morning.
Nah, you get downgraded to the essentials plan: 20/40 eyesight, dry eyeballs, ads on your peripheral vision and random eye twitching throughout the day
Yeah, plus the “cutting edge” prosthetic tech we currently have is mostly overhyped marketing.
There are about a dozen powered prosthetics I always see on social media that always look really cool and the “patients” always go on and on about how useful it is…What people don’t realize is those “patients” are being paid by the manufacturer, and usually part of the deal is that they get the limb for free.
They don’t tell you about having to wear a heavy battery pack that only lasts for a couple hours. They don’t tell you that you have to pre-program routines like tying your shoe laces. That you have to purposely concentrate on flexing residual muscle groups in your limb to activate those routines. Nor do they tell you that the majority of patients who own those devices usually revert back to a manual prosthetic for functional tasks, or just choose not to wear a prosthetic at all because they can achieve more function with their stumps.
While prosthetics have started looking more futuristic and functional, unfortunately we haven’t really advanced any technology that actually improves function and utility since the late 90’s. And I highly doubt we’ll ever make a prosthetic that provides more utility than the limb it’s replacing, not in our lifetime at least.
Plus, a lot of them just end up being no longer supported at all. Oopsie your Planned Obsolescent Leg needs replacing again
Yeah, that can be an issue with some of the more advanced knee units and upper limb devices if they are being done by a private clinic and being purchased by a private insurance or a workers comp case.
Luckily Medicare and most Medicaid programs dictate that the clinic that fabricates the limb also maintains the limb until the patient qualifies for a new one.
Jockey literally lost his exoskeleton due to end of life.
People with bionic eye implants are going blind again after the gadget expired inside their bodies. More than 350 people have a discontinued retinal implant in their eyeballs. The invention was once a cutting-edge option for restoring sight, but it has been replaced by newer technologies.
Any cybernetics would have to be built for me by a hobbyist with a workshop full of Raspberry Pis or something
And by “or something,” you probably mean 3d printers.
and a few arduinos
In a loose sense, any implant makes you a cyborg, in a more strict sense implants that control something in your body do. Heart rate control by a pacer, insulin level control by an implant, hearing aid, some more complicated implants all make you a cyborg but usually not the cyborg one imagines
I have an artificial lens in one eye (like a contact lens that’s been glued in place) that has built in uv protection. Not cybernetic as such, but I’d say it was adjacent.
Yeah that sounds cool af
Lol, And all it cost me the ability to focus on anything not exexactly 37 inches away.
Fun fact, many of the intra-ocular lenses and contact lenses that provide UV protection do so just by the properties of the material they are made of, not any special coating.
A friend of mine changed his internal lenses to synthetic ones due to cataracts. He was used to the dim light of cataracts and it took him a while to get used to a brighter world.
Dude had built in shades and didn’t know it.
Meanwhile IRL cool cybernetic implants: I’m sorry our company has been bought by Amazon and support for your eyes has been dropped. Please refer to a local surgeon to remove them at your expense.
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We’re approaching a cool cyberpunk future but can’t even get wet streets with reflective purple neon signs 😔
Talk to c/hydrohomies if you have trouble with streets not being wet enough
don’t waste good water
wetten the streets with kerosene
Seattle has the wet streets covered. Someone just needs to install some signs.
We’ve got the wonder bread sign what more could you want?
Lots of places in East Asia with those vibes
This is fair, if we had neon shit and cybernetics it would make the world a little cooler I guess.
Nah, they’d make it like repo.
there are plenty of cybernetic implants that do not work anymore because the company that makes them refuses to update them so that part is totally already a thing
Reality check: Life’s more “flickering office bulb” than “cyberpunk neon dream.” Guess we’re stuck in Blade Runner: Budget Cut Edition.
That real “we have cyberpunk at home” aesthetic
We are not even going to get dense cities like Night City. Imagine how much worse the cyberpunk dystopia is going to be with a 2.5 hour commute each way from the suburbs along a mega highway.
Do NYC, Seattle, SF, London, Tokyo, and all of the other dense cities not exist anymore?
None of those are even close to the density of Night City. Tokyo has a density of 6,363 persons/km^2, compared to Night City’s density of 65,000 people/km^2.
Also those are ‘old’ cities. They have historical reasons for increasing density. Night City is a city founded and built by mega corps, represents the ‘new’ world that the mega corps want to build. My point is that in our world, the type of cities that are being built and our mega corps want, are all suburban spawl.
Look, us YIMBYs are trying our best, okay?
Depending on where you live, you can also have the cool neon aesthetic.
Fuck neon, LEDs, all that bright shit spoiling the night. Razor-sharp splashes of light pollution is not an aesthetic, they are an eyestrain and an ad space. My homies enjoy old districts and wilderness where they can relax and see the stars for once.
That doesn’t sound very dystopian
We already have cool cybernetic implants. We also have even cooler corporate greed and a massive lack of right-to-repair laws so that you can get stuck with a deactivated implant!
We do have Elon Musk brain implants now. Any takers? Didn’t think so. You do not want to go cyberpunk
We also have killer robot dogs and illicit cloning labs irl now.
All of the bad stuff, none of the cool stuff.
In real life we had cybernetic implants shut down by corporations because they weren’t profitable enough.
I don’t think there’s anything more cyberpunk than that.
We could definitely use more neon though. Might have to look into WLED and light strips again.
Or worse, your implants start getting repo’d by said corpos. And there’s no Jude Law.
2010 repomen movie…
