I’m for modular external tech with a manual hardware interface. Of course I encrypt my grocery list. The thought of allow in a product to connect with my mind on more than a nerve connection for a replaced limb gives me countless nightmare scenarios and privacy/virus/rootkit concerns. I don’t trust any closed source project, or open source for that matter, but I rate them much higher.

The last thing I want is a Sony rootkit or some hack-job Microsoft/Apple OS implanted in me. I’m all for tech advances, but I want to be able to take it off at will and not have to worry about some program turning on network access at will or data mining my mind.

Call me paranoid, but if computers were DNI only I’d be living in a cave somewhere preaching about the dangers of technology.

Would you really need to request communication with your wife?

You could have a pervasive, granular interest in being interrupted.
Happy to chat with anyone
Happy to chat with the wife only
Happy to make plans with the wife, but no mindless chatting etc
Happy to accept communications about Project Y from anyone

And how much discrete communication is needed? You would just already be transparently sharing your entire existence and thoughts to various friend groups. Total lifecasting of every moment, thought and sensation. Seamlessly tagged with the right privacy and notification setting. (Send it out /to/ someone, have it available if they ask for it etc)

I like this vision, but itd make life a lot harder in some senses. Like you receive a call from your wife and you’re distracted and you think about some other woman, or something. It might be harder to mask feelings, like that you’re mad your boss is pestering you on a friday evening. There’s probably some other stuff that I could point out, thats just off the top of my head.

You had me at “sitting in a room, eating a sandwich”.

Earlier today I wrote up a response to both this and your previous posting regarding this video. Check it out.

Ultimately I don’t think your (alternate) vision went far enough, but it’s in the right direction at least. Far better than the unimaginative Microsoft ad. While the brain will be the next interface, it just seems logical that the human body will eventually become obsolete as we embrace improving it. When we reach the stage of enhancing or replacing the human brain, there really is no limit to what mankind can achieve.

@ peterix:

Well, that’s like asking why we still walk even though we have machines to ferry us around. We still walk for fun, for sport and for the hell of it. Eating is a pleasurable experience. I could see how people could possibly want to augment themselves to eliminate traditional waste evacuation, but why give up on eating regular food for the taste.

Granted, you could simulate the experience. Still, I suspect there would be enthusiasts more than willing to try the real thing.

@ Morghan:

True, but I suspect that you could flush/re-install the software that runs your wetware with anonymized credentials and drop off the grid that way. Maybe. Or just set of an EMP to fry it. Or get a quick surgical removal at the auto-doc booth on the corner. Or back-up and decant yourself a “clean” bio-body in the nearest full-body nano-fab tube.

@ icebrain:

TIL that I need to read Transmetropolitan. :P

Luke Maciak wrote:

Hell, I think at some point I have seen them use a Basslisk like idea – spam the visual cortex of the victim with seizure inducing, impossibly complex fractal imagery to cause a buffer overflow in an underlying optical processing software.

That reminds me of Transmet’s Buybombs: https://imgur.com/a/JTU1z
I wonder when will Google start offering free telepathic services in exchange for having to dream about ads ;)

Yeah, too much room for serious problems with neural interfaces, and you can’t just throw out an implant if you need to go off the grid. Though I must admit that I think uploading would become more and more attractive as the body begins to break down.

@ peterix:
i did never say that i would want to stay human. If you can become something better, then why not? Eating Sandwitches is probably a bad example, it’s both, a source of energy (will need that in some way, so why not sandwitches?) and it’s some kind of thing you want to experience. Going to work on the other hand is something completely overrated. I don’t see why anyone would want something like this, be he human or something completely different.

@ Dr. Azrael Tod:
The camera zooms into his bionic eye and the matrix happens.

The main problem here is that the brain is a delicate structure. It can adapt to a lot of things, but that needs time, lot of training. Any such man-machine hybrid would have to be created artificially, with the machines interfacing with the wetware early on – embryo early.

If you have such powers, why remain ‘human’ at all? Why make sandwiches and go to work? It just seems redundant at that point.