It’s interesting how peoples’ play styles influence their views on transhumanism. And I don’t get the whole ‘mutations and cybernetics make the game too easy’ thing. Sure, they can make it easier, but I’ve lost plenty of horrifying mutant cyborgs to my own hubris.
It’s my opinion that people against human augmentation are reactionaries, scared of fire, electricity is the devil, that sort of folk, just a different generation of tech. An integrated toolset is just a screwdriver/other tool you keep in a convenient place. It makes as much sense to be against the concept of pockets or toolbelts.
I mean, are you afraid of never being able to remove your technology? I have to wear glasses or I can’t see, and I wear my watch every time I step out of my house. Those things might as well be melded with my flesh, and I’d in fact like them to be, in better forms of course. There’s always the risk of hacking, of faults, but that’s true for every tech that’s come before to one extent or another (poke my eyes out, take away my glasses, hack my retinal implants). Shouldn’t you also be against the concept of modern medicine (unnatural means of extending/enhancing life), especially pacemakers and implanted defibrillators? After all, those are the bionics we currently have, where is the line drawn? And the risk of government oversight? That’s happening anyways, and I’d rather have the benefits of a terrible cyberpunk dystopia, not just the oppression, thank you very much.
The risk of a corporation owning you would be a little concerning, if not for the fact that this technology would more likely than not extend your life, if not make it effectively endless. I’d take 100 years of indentured servitude for even 30 free years of being as augmented as my little mechaheart desires.
It’s a bit optimistic, I guess people might say, but their ‘realism’ is stagnation, which has never been a thing that’s lasted more than a generation. Progress happens.
