When I was in college, we had to research a social movement for class. I chose the Cyborg Foundation, founded by the world's first documented cyborg, Neil Harbison. He was born greyscale colorblind, and has an external implant to let him sense colors. But he's been kicked out of movie theaters under suspicion of recording, and got held up by airport security for triggering metal detectors. The Cyborg Foundation was established in 2010 to provide resources and protections to augmented humans (and even some animals.) I was hoping they'd get an honorary mention in this video, since it's a real, ongoing example.
It's not really an augment if it only brings him up to non-augmented human levels of capability though, isn't it? Also, Neil Harbinson is NOT the worlds first documented cyborg, that's absolute trash tier journalism. People have had pacemaker implants for longer than he's been alive.
Eugenics, so they dont kill eachother with the tech. Logic isnt evil even if people who did bad things advocated for it.. thats akin to saying "jeffery dahmer loved chocolate ice cream.. so chocolate ice cream is evil"
So a human brain pretending the rest of the body is a vistgial organ? Great idea for space travel & ocean exploration. But extremely alienating for practical society, expensive to reproduce, and impossible with known technology presently. Possibly indefinitely, a consideration before pursuit to fulfilment. Needs the advancement & emulation of entire nervous system, sleep cycle, blood & oxygen filtration, nutritional intake method, blood pressure & waste & heat mediation. Legal explanation of philosophical "here" definition. Improvement on human eye, sight, hearing, smell, taste, electomagnetic & infrared spectrum, magnification, temperature & states of matter senses are all present tech. Touch, pressure, balance, fluid movement, longevity & tactile sensation are all inferior to human form. But can vastly improve if we have means to develop outside of human form shapes & find means to rewire brain activity to positive feedback physical therapy. I hope i see this in my lifetime. Stephen Hawking should have got this, if he wanted it.
When our kids were growing up, we routinely referred to prostheses as " robot arms", &c. My late wife referred to her gold crowns as her "robot teeth", which amused our kids immensely, especially when I drew cartoons of a mouth which included teeth with robotic faces and limbs.
As someone who has a metalic valve implanted in the heart, plus 15 small titanium pieces and 31 titanium screws in the skull and a permanent orthodontic appliance, I fully agree.
Does your cybernetic system connect (and report) to the internet tho'? It seems like everything now requires you to let the device phone home with your private info, or it stops working. I found even vacuum cleaners were threatening to stop working if I stopped them accessing outside servers.
@@BrettCaton that is messed up. My VR headset, playing a standalone single player game, wanted to "log in to cloud" - what if I'm on Vacation in a very remote area or its after a disaster? Things need to work off-grid. By law. Guaranteed.
"Your flesh is weak, only a vessel. Surrender it, and a new world awaits." I would give up this body if it meant I didn't have to 'live' in chronic pain and had a chance to be free.
@@SicFromTheKush I'm saying if you have a prosthetic leg, even if it's built in to your bone, that's a mechanical leg. Two mechanical legs and two mechanical arms? Cyborg
Dude, the way you conceptualize ideas is so impressive. You draw connections that, in hindsight, seem obvious, but that's only true after they've been suggested.
I think you hit the nail in the head for virtual reality being a solid route to cyborg civilizations. Assuming FTL never becomes a thing, space travel is not going to be a short affair. Access to simulated natural environments would most likely be the only route to maintain sanity… And a headset that shows you nature isn’t the same as neural augments that let you LIVE there.
Tool usage. I mean, when you use a good tool, or a large mobile piece of equipment even, you forget that it isn't a part of you, when you're manipulating it. You don't think step by step which way to move the tool to make it do what you want, you just do it. That's the type of connection I expect augmentation would be like, driving a hi-lo.
I can definitely vouch for questioning the line between man and machine, not only do I have glasses like your example, but I also have an Omnipod (tubeless insulin pump), and a Dexcom G6 (continuous glucose monitor). I would upgrade to a Dexcom G7 but I am waiting for it to be compatible with Omnipod.
I think there's a worthy distinction to be made between prosthetics that (attempt to) maintain a baseline level of human ability for someone who lost or never had that capability, and an augmentation to increase that persons capability beyond baseline. All we have now are prosthetics that attempt to maintain a basal human capability, while what I think what most people mean by cyborg and cybernetics is something that increases a humans capability beyond what would be possible otherwise. E: I think there can be a case made for blade runners being better than our birth-given feet - although they're more specialized. They can make someone a faster runner, but they're worse at, say, climbing.
It's not new senses though. We already have them or the capacity to use them. You only need to unlock them through practice. It's like snatching a fly out of the air flying a few inches from your ear. Humans have a low rate echolocation that can be practiced enough that a blind kid clicking his tongue can shoot basketball from the freethrow line. Anyone can learn to control their skin in order to slow or even entirely stop bleeding from small to mid sized cuts and abrasions simply by focusing enough on that part of your skin. No pressure needs be applied to the cut, you just stop your own bleeding. You can learn breathing techniques that allow you to easily operate on 1/10 the oxygen a normal person does. It drastically increases endurance to the point where most modern people have already clocked out when you're just hitting your stride. It opens the entire day up. You want to be in good nerve health to make things easy for you but with enough stretching, tensing, and focus meditation, and a good diet you can control any part of your body you can feel.
@@JoshuaEFinleyMind sharing sources on how any of that can be done? It all sounds plausible to me, so I'm kinda wondering how one goes about doing it.
@@JoshuaEFinleyI am quite sure he's talking about the people that implant a magnet into their finger to feel electromagnetic fields... I am quite unsure if its possible to learn that
Video games like Deus Ex introduced me to the concept of transhumanism, and it changed my outlook on how i see technology and biology. It helped me decide my future career path in human enhancement technologies. Im convinced that humanity will become cyborgs in a gradual trend of integrating technology into the human body. Exoskeletons and wearable technologies like smart watches are the very first step towards human augmentation. Brain computer interfaces are starting to get more attention with the neuralink. The emergence of AI could usher the singularity that could exponentially speed up the process of transhumanism. I'm 25 and im glad that ill be able to witness the emergence of cybernetics. I'll definitely augment myself well into my old age to prevent brain and body degradation. Imagine being 100 years old and you have a cybernetic body that is comparable to the top athletes, bodybuilders, and endurance runners? The future is very bright and i hope more people realize the potential of transhumanism and cyborgs.
If one has the money, the difference between the mass of humanity and the rich will be stark, so much so I wonder how each group will look at the other. Past examples of the way elites look at the lower classes do not bode well for society. Heck even the Marxists have become elite and they just use the lower classes. Some times people are a bit polyanish here, human nature is what it is, can not engineer it, the laws to control it become authoritarian as people seek "safety and predictability" I fear we are coming up on some rude awakenings in the u.s. welcome to the world outside of the west.
Excerpted from a talk given by Hugh Darrow at the 2020 Human Plus Conference in San Jose. "We get carried away with the idea of bolting robot arms and legs to our fleshy torsos, but I firmly believe that the real core of what we can innovate lies within our meat - more specifically, in our brains. Deep brain implants are the way in which the human machine can truly be supercharged. Consider our gray matter; our neural DNA has been imprinted with a mammoth amount of information allowing us to parallel-process huge and complex data sets in quick order - but for all that, our "wet memory" is patchy and sporadic. We lack the ability to communicate data in complete fashion! Through the use of cognitive enhancement implants providing neurotropic stimuli, we are capable of creating a new level of neural synchrony that can effectively boost brain capacity; and via wireless data-parsing subsystems, a form of "radio telepathy" is a real and viable concept. Faster brains processing more data, reacting quicker, capable of streaming that data in real-time to other similarly accelerated posthumans -- this is the real frontier." - Deus Ex: Human Revolution
My super power is my teeth staying roughly where I want them thanks to a metal bar behind them. My friend's superpower is 20-20 vision enforced by lasers. Another is slowing and deliberately morphing their body to one that more suits their view of themselves.
As for cyborgs, another line was crossed recently. Neuralink implanted it's first brain chip, and the patient couldn't be more happy with it. He's asking for more, including controlling a humanoid robot. Combining the two is also possible, to have artificial limbs you can control with your thoughts, like the natural ones. And ultimately the goal is full brain augmentation, that makes you smarter, connects you directly to the internet, lets you mind-control machines, makes backup copies of you mind, and so on. This is a bit further away, of course. A few decades minimum, but could still happen in our lifetime.
Main problem with cybernetics for me is getting obsolete and forced subscriptions. What if the producer does not want to support a cyber implant 2 years after surgery? What if they subscription plan goes to "+ads", so you cannot wake up without 30 min of ads in the morning?
Plus the fact that they can also travk you, listen to you, see through you, and sell your data; just like your phone. But it is incorporated into your body and ypu can not choose to take it off easily as your phone.
@@insertname9736most of the stuff cybernetics could replace for human would not require a Wi-Fi connection Can’t hack something you don’t have access to, ca’t track something that doesn’t give off a signal
I think the purely automated AI path we're on now is a dead end, people just haven't realized it yet. After we realize it our attention will shift to cybernetics.
I think we can have 3 different scales of cyborgs, which have some some level of overlap. Internal vs external, replacement vs addition/enhance, and optional vs mandatory. For example a prosthetic limb is external, replacement, and mandatory. It's outside of your body, it's replacing your old leg/arm, and you have to have it to walk. A cellphone would be external, additional, optional. It's not something in you, it's offering options that you didn't have before such as Internet access and communication, and you can function without it if you choose to (despite what teenagers think).
I'm not a true cyborg, but I've had a few implants. Getting old, slowly replacing my body parts... Is SFIA having its 10 year anniversary soon or have I missed it? Crazy its been that long! This episode is another banger, thank you! 125% speed for the first listen, now its down to 90% for the second listen (as my bedtime story).
The thought of an augmentation that tricks you into thinking that you are eating a full meal with fixings and dessert made me think of Violet Beauregarde from Willy Wonka. What could go wrong? lol
Cyborgization is just a stepping stone to robotization. I don't think a civilization that takes the 80/20 step would not go that one step further. Unless there is something stopping the ghost from living in the machine. Who knows?
1:00 My uncle who lived in Fairbanks, Alaska back in the 80s described it that way. Half the population was waiting out various statutes of limitations in other states, and the other half had no intention of going back.
I have been contemplating what it could be like to link with your partner, and how this could become the stage of the relationship before getting engaged. Those moments where words fail to relay adequately what you feel/mean would no longer be a thing since you could literally send them how you feel, or even send full images/videos of your daydream.
The thought occurs, actually wired into human hardware cybernetics might be short-lived if it becomes a big thing at all: Solving the problem for how to wire something into the human body might be harder than reading, and even writing, motor and sensory data to the human brain wirelessly. Then you don't even connect a prosthesis, outside of tethering it, and you can be commanding drones, either ones that look like real arms, legs and eyes or hands that fly around attached to a little quadcopter mechanism
I think that the transition into cyborg or having cybernetics, as we think of them in sci-fi, would require a couple of things. Basically, they would need to be "smart appliances" in that they offer some higher order of functionality over the natural and also that they can be installed even without a previous medical condition. It's true that current medical devices are, strictly speaking, cybernetic implants, but I think they are more inline with prosthetics rather than cybernetics as far as terminology goes.
My friend Bruno a retired lumberjack from Slovakia wiill maybe be the last willing Cyborg. He lives self sustained in the White Mountains in New Hampshire. No need for electricity or phone or address or neighbors. He hunts, fishes, forages, grows veggies, fruit, nut trees..Even when he occasionally must go to "pavement " once a month for his liquor and bullets, is a big deal for him.
I have a question about time . We experience the flow of time as it's processed by the brain and it tells us the "speed" its passing (which has a little variability depending on the situation like fear/excitement/boredom) If we augmented ourselves to live longer, could you also speed up your thinking so that it feels like you're living a lot longer - but really its just the perception of time?
Your nerve signals can't be sped up, they're actually chemical changes. You could only accomplish "faster thinking" by doing the thinking in a mechanical computer implant which then sends signals to the brain regarding what to say or do.
0:10 cyborgization is undenyably an important step, a big part of the transhumanist goal for uplifting improving and freeing humanity and other species we could and should uplift, but its not the end goal, not even full digitizing of the human mind would be ideal, since that would open vulnerablities like computer viruses wiping humanity out, instead i like the idea of the orchid cage more, organic minds and enough meat to support them but built into a robotic body with its own digital twin copy of that organic mind, both connected, like the two hemisphere of the brain, it may sound strange or redundant, but it would shield against devistating threats like radiation, or computer viruses, and even if somehting damaged or destroyed one of the new humans minds there is a constant imediate backup maintaining the individuals conciouness while the damage is repaired, no time lost like with back up saves of the mind, adendum i nearly forgot to mention the iportance of using genetic engeniering to enhance the organic parts, incress resenctence to radiation, cancer, cellular regeneration of organ and brain tissue, and better resiliance to being frozen to allow for cheap cryo stasis to finaly be a reality making sub light space travel much more merciful on the human mind, and less resorce demanding. see info on tardigrades, wasps and axolotl for all required traits we need to give to our own species... and id argure, earth life in general, there is no reason not to enhance the regeneritive abilities of all native life to be more robust.
Strongly recommend you check out the Amon-Iram SCP stories. Machinery-cult ancient civilization where prosthetics and augmentations were commonplace and sometimes considered sacred. Interesting take on the concept!
23:45 Getting bored of something may be a necessary part of intellectual being. We wouldn't turn off boredom. If it truly got to that point, we would eventually turn off ourselves.
I recently had cataract surgery. When this is done new corrective lenses are also "installed". This was the case with me. I can now see distance as good as I could when I was 19. I'm well on my way to becoming a cyborg.
From a seminar by Hugh Darrow for BBC Four, Spring 2009 "The form and function of what are commonly known as cybernetic limbs - that is, mechanical augmentation prosthetics - can be summed up in a single word; improvement. These augmentation technologies replace feet, hands, legs, or arms with a synthetic model that can easily replicate, if not surpass, the abilties of an organic limb. In cross-section, cyber-limbs are composed of muscles made from electroactive polymer bunches arranged around artificial bones that are, in turn, formed from dense superplastics or lightweight metal alloy foams. Fluid shock-absorbing joint mechanisms complete the mimicry of human form, and to give the limbs a more "realistic" sense, they are typically coated with a nano-scale artificial epidermis that resembles flesh. Inside the limbs, microcomputer units interface directly with biochips implanted in the organic parts of the augmentee's body, translating nerve impulses from the brain directly into action and motion. Far more advanced then the crude constructs of the past, these human augmentations allow us to become better, faster, stronger." -Deus Ex: Human Revolution
So many good references to quite different sci-fi franchises... but the one that really fits perfect to this episode is missing badly: Ghost in the Shell Why?
I have always thought humans merging with machines/software is the natural progression for humanity. There will be the classical human with no augmentations, Humans merged with technology, Humans enhanced solely by bio/dna and last 100 sentient machines.
Ah.. You had me at Brain in a jar 😂😂😂.. Omg who wants to become a toaster with a brain or a disembodied consciousness ? Yikes.. I see the future and its scary
@@Shashu_the_little_Voidling Humans are wonderfully and marvelously made. Why would one want to create an inferior copy in iron ? Iron and flesh do not mingle well. It's akin to a forgery of a Rembrandt. Similar but no soulfulness. Cold and imperfect.
AFAIK any kind of living organism that has restored function or enhanced abilities due to the integration of some tecnology artificial component or that relies on feedback is the definition of cyborgs and in the original broader meaning even performance enhancing drugs and advanced medical drugs and genetics engineering was/could be considered one. But let's see the video to find out. But CGM and Insulin pumps definitely count as well as advanced feedback based performance enhancing medication. And OFC everything you have mentioned also counts. And nowadays very advanced and responsive, touch sensitive artificial like and prosthetics exist.
One thing i recently learned ia brain implants are almost ultimately rejected by the nervous system, somehow it recognizes that something isnt correct and creates scar tissue around the contacts and signal quality degrades.. have you noticed that elons BMI has come along way but we dont see any subjects that have had it for extended periods of time. Im sure we can find a workaround but i found that interesting. What i really want is eyes that see the entire electromagnetic spectrum, adjustable of course..
Great episode as always. I think you are severely underselling the mental health aspect of widespread cybernetic enhancement, especially extensive ones - I also feel the same way about mind uploading. Humans are already naturally very vulnerable to dysphroia. Alienating a human mind from the bodily functions and sensory experiences it's used to, even if it's just a substitution rather than a deletion, is likely to be deeply traumatic. The more substitutions made, the more severe the trauma. A robotic hand or a robotic eye or robotic guts are sure to be fine, and even a combination of all three would be hunky dory, but the idea of a human foregoing eating for a more energy-efficient option? I think it'd just destroy people, mentally. Our brains are wired to need to eat, need to breathe, to percieve things in a certain way, otherwise we'd just 'break' mentally. Just like people would get 'homesick' for earth, they would get 'bodysick' for their flesh. Now obviously there are plenty of examples of very, very mentally broken groups of people throughout human history achieving great things. Plus, our neurological understanding of mental health grows more extensive with every year - maybe we'd just pop our dysphoria pills for the month and do our thing. Obviously posthuman intelligences and artificial intelligences would help remedy this, too. But regardless I think that it would be a paradigm hugely dominated by managing dysphoria and those 'bodysick' symptoms. A colony in the Oort cloud with hyper-efficient electronic metabolism might eat not because they need food, but to stave off insanity.
All those psych needs should be alterable too. If you can remove the need to eat, then trick the part(s) of you that feel the need to eat, as described in the video, then what trauma is there to experience?
@@abrahamroloff8671 One day, certainly. But we'll certainly figure out that kind of life support before we figure out how to master the psychology (and neurology) of our own needs. We're humans who have eaten before, even if I don't feel hunger, I will want to eat. I will miss eating, and I will miss it more over time, ozempic or not. Just like I would miss the feeling of sun, or of fresh air. It's more likely people will bite the bullet and eat, or do something that scratches the itch. I could imagine chewing gum might serve a similar role. This is all unless you've never introduced me to the pleasure of flavour and texture, which brings us back to the artificial/alternative intelligences. We can extrapolate this to alll kinds of other psychological needs that humans have that are usually considered inalienable (breathing, drinking, sleeping, moving, heart beating etc).
❤ video request: sci-fi Sunday episode about an episode about a potential exoplanet where life evolved to live like the fungi of Chernobyl ❤ maybe what it would take to adapt humanity to live harmoniously with such a world that hosts an ecosystem based on radiation instead of sunlight, biological and cybernetic augmentation to allow increased radiation resistance, and with those changes would ultimately entail both for the individual and for the society of that world ❤ i’ve been watching your show since your channel was only like two years old, I absolutely love your work, thank you so much for continuing to put out such awesome and inspiring videos ❤
The flesh is weak, so we transcend through circuits and steel our wills we mend strength not born, but built and designed with every upgrade our power refined!
Generally if you can make advanced cybernetics, you can make a powered exoskeleton aka iron man suits. Something much easier to power and customize without removing necessary organs. If we actually figure out how to transfer a consciousness into a machine body, I can see some people opting for that style of immortality.
This is like the Olamic Quietude from warhammer 40k! They should make an warhammer 40k game out of them. automaton helldivers 2, Strogg from Quake, or Borg.
In a limited way, I am a cyborg...both my natural lenses have been replaced due to cataracts. I see far more clearly than I have in my life. Even prior to cataracts, I was very nearsighted. Now, I almost don't need glasses... slightly nearsighted. I am one happy and grateful cyborg- no longer slowly going blind...seeing the world clearly is a very good thing.
Nano-Augmentation: Pipedream, or Theory for The Future? By Hugh Darrow Excerpt from a paper in NeoNature, September 2022 "We've been throwing the word "nanotechnology" around for decades yet, despite only our bests effort, we are only inching closer to that molecular-scale frontier when in fact we should be racing towards it. In the decades to come, the enhanced beings -- post humans who are our progeny -- will look at the mechanical devices we rudely bolted onto our living flesh or buried inside our grey matter, and they will mock us for our crudity. They will look upon what we have made with the same curiosity, the same disinterest, as the pilot of a veetol aircraft would look upon an ox cart. The future of human augmentation lies in the small - in fact, the smallest. In the next thirty years, the molecular frontier will be broken and true nano-scalar programming and biological reorientation will be possible. There will be no tedious instances of severing limbs to replace them with steel proxies. We will drink in these tiny machines, inject them - and be transformed." - Deus Ex: Human Revolution
I'd certainly replace my eyes with artificial ones if it could result in much better vision. Imagine being able to see a lot more of the electromagnetic spectrum, at your will and discretion.
Related to today's topic and an excellent example of the Cyborg subject would be this book: Hardwired - the book by Walter Jon Williams I highly recommend it to anyone who is a cyberpunk fan!
It may just be me but I generally put the line for cyborg at elective surgery that's purpose is to replace functional anatomy with something better than average functioning version. So pacemaker or fillings wouldn't count as its replacing nonfunctional, the mechanicus would count as they replace functional body parts.
I agree that the line is when the replacement is superior in every way. If you need to take off your arm every few months to get it serviced then it's just a prosthet
