Monday, September 12, 2011

All I Want For Christmas Is a New Cyborg Arm

I wonder if we'll ever reach the point when people will want to start deliberately handicapping themselves just so they can get the awesome prosthetics. Or rather, will there come a time when the disabled become superior to us regular folk, just be the virtue of technology that allows them to not only function as well as human being, but even better? Now, I've discussed many times before ("many times" here meaning "I think I might have done a post about one time maybe but I'm not sure") that I'd be totally on board for getting robot eyes and stuff. If they develop the technology to give me an arm that can punch through walls, and it becomes affordable, I WANT ONE OF THOSE GODDAMN ARMS. But see, you gotta get your old arm chopped off to do that. Will that be a service the doctors provide, or will I have to lob my own limbs with a hacksaw in my garage and then call the hospital? Would amputating my arm just because I want a new one be on the same level as physician assisted suicide, or would it be like plastic surgery, except awesome?

I mean, they're developing those suits, right? The ones that can totally make you like 10 times as strong? Yeah, currently there's main problems with those. Number one, power. Number two, they look stupid. So let's say fifty years down the line, we've solved the power issue and streamlined the design into a "just limbs, looks badass" model. Would you wear one all the time? I probably would. Then we'd probably get about a year or so of people trying to be like Iron Man. Then the supervillains would show up. If anything, war is going to become a lot more insane. That is, if we haven't started fighting entirely with robots by then.

Basically, I'm imagining the world of Gattaca, but with robot suits instead of genetic engineering. Actually, I want the genetic engineering too. But I'll probably be dead by the time all this stuff gets going. Dammit.

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