chillin' in 1954

i'm a transhumanist, someone who believes that technology can and should be used to improve the human condition, and specifically, the human body. this is why i have all these implants, and why i design more - i want to learn something about how to use technology to help me, and in doing that, maybe help someone else to improve themselves too, or even create something that helps millions of us.

my view of the future of such implants is completely bottom-up, in that i'm for creating implants that can do a fraction of what i want an entire transhuman body to be able to, and then combining them in my research subject - yours truly - as science and i progress, to eventually add them together and get closer to what i want. hence the tiny, homebrew components i've sited and had sited are simplistic and monofunctional; but an array of tiny, monofunctional devices is what we call a computer, and i hope the whole human who has many modifications like these will be better than the sum of their parts.

a lot of people don't agree with me. go to a discussion on transhumanism like the ones started by my buddies at Atheist Nexus, and you find people wanting downloadable silicon brains, full-conversion robotic bodies, cybernetic jacks into virtual representations of the Net, ad nauseam. now these are wonderful dreams, sure, but we're not living in a manga or a game, we're adults alive in 2008 and we're probably not gonna live to see this shit. i see so many people totally unmodified, hanging around in cyberspace waiting for Masamune Shirow's prosthetic robot bodies and electronic ghosts. it's not gonna happen in your lifetime, awesome as it'd be if it did. it's like we're sitting around in 1954, waiting for our robotic house servants and our flawless machine translation, before any of us has even taken a look at a neuron.

so we don't get ageless, beautiful super-cyborg shells, and we don't get mathematically enhanced solid-state brains to put in them. what we do get is various electronic components that aren't averse to being immersed in a wet environment, soldering guns, electronics knowledge readily available to anyone who can get to a library, and curious, inventive, spectacular human minds. what we do get is the curiosity and the resources to start creating those dreams.

so if you're a transhumanist as well, and you always wanted a cyberdeck, you can't have one yet. sorry. but don't sit on your ass waiting for someone else to invent them. experiment for yourself. design a few circuits, try an RFID security system out, see what today's technology can do for tomorrow's dreams and see what you can do to bring about some tiny part of that transhuman species you wanna see. get the fuck out there and put our philosophy into practice.

L