Are We Cyborgs Now?

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I'm not sure of the right forum to put this in but anyway.

They say that humans are eventually going to become cyborgs. I think we've become that already.

Look at the amount of time we spend interacting with computers and phones and even televisions. It's probably more than with humans. And all the technology we've got now: everything is controlled by our phone or Alexa or other computers. Even cars have computers in.

And obviously a lot of people have—I don't want to say cyborg implants—but a lot of people have non-organic parts such as hearts, legs, arms etc.

Because if there was an EMP and all the technology went down, we wouldn't know what to do would we? We’d be lost.

So I wonder if the jump from human to cyborg has actually happened already?

I guess it will be a slow migration, with medical advances providing more and more machine parts to integrate into our bodies to keep us alive or active. Sooner or later, some folks may opt for artificial implants considering them an upgrade but without medical necessity.

When people are using their phones, they're normally using them to socialize with their friends and family members, it just *looks* like they're sitting around being antisocial, like that cartoon I saw in another post.

I don't think humans will ever be successfully made into cyborgs because the human body naturally rejects anything foreign, including real organ transplants. We aren't going to become The Six Dollar Man anytime soon. Especially since six million dollars in the 70's when they made that show would be, I don't know, six hundred billion dollars in 2022?

Not yet!

We’re just addicted to waste of time internet BS on screens instead of living real life, doing work, accomplishing things, being physically active etc.

I had/have a very minor back injury this past week and have grown so bored of waste of time screen crapola I’m motivated to get a few tasks physically completed and maybe go ride my motorcycle, find some work to do/earn some money, go for a trek at the beach etc vs stare at screens until my brain turns to mush. :googleyeyes:

I think that if, and it's looking like a big if at the moment, we make it through the coming environmental crises without a rapid and massive reduction in human population and a forced return to simpler ways of living, it's probably inevitable that we will interface with machines at some point. As OP says, the process has already started.

The mechanism for change in our bodies to meet environmental conditions (i.e. evolution) is simply too slow to keep up with us now. Most of us barely use our bodies any more comparatively, but we still have them and they grow fat and unhealthy, using up precious energy for pretty much no good reason, then they get sick and die taking our accumulated experience and wisdom with them. There's got to be a more efficient way to power a brain of human size than these huge meat sacks we have lugging us about. Given time evolution would find it, but the pace of change is unbearable, we've learned that we don't have to wait.

Something I find super frustrating is that there's no way to absorb other people's experiences. Our ancestors write books, tell us stories - do everything they can to teach us what they've learned and we can take in some of it but most of it we seem to have to learn from our own experience. I think of that quote, I don't know who said it:

Imagine if you could start at that realization you have at 60. (Actually, I don't know how accurate this is, I still care at 43 and wish I didn't as much). But it seems we all have to go through this crap. You can pass on ideas but you can't pass on experience.

Perhaps technology could make it so we could. What realizations would we have at 60, if we started at our ancestors' 60? What about the generation after that? This would be real progress. Maybe we could leave behind all the crappy stuff - the low self-esteem, the social anxieties, the inferiority complexes and imposter syndromes. Maybe we could learn to see ourselves proportionately to the rest of the living world en masse. Maybe we'd all be zen monks.

All very high-concept. The reality, it seems to me, is that most of our technological advances so far have taken us further away from our nature and probably add up to a net negative. There's no reason to expect that becoming cyborgs would be any different. Although perhaps it's because we've yet to find the technology that releases us from our biological nature that we suffer from our advances? Maybe being a cyborg is the answer to that?

I honestly don't think it will happen this time around. I think, unless we master nuclear fusion very soon, we're due a 'correction' to the way we've been living and it won't be the future we've been imagining, it'll look a lot like the past. But I think we'll survive like the cockroaches we are and repopulate in a few thousand years. Maybe next time we'll get around to connecting our brains up to the machines?

Are you calling ME a "cyborg"?????

Well...well...


https://youtu.be/FSlgziDIZTE


Sorry...
Ive calmed down. All I meant to say was this:

https://youtu.be/I_FuOcmD5QU

I have always HATED being physically active, long before the internet ever came out. I would rather be reading or drawing or playing alone with my toys as a kid, which was what I'd usually be doing before my mom would be "GO PLAY OUTSIDE! GET SOME FRESH AIR!" And then I'd be outside alone on the back doorstep, bored and freezing my butt off.

I remember one year on Christmas morning my brother and I found what was supposedly a letter written to us by Santa under the tree, and it said that I needed to "play outside more" and "cry less". Oh, and Rudolph said we had a good dog and to take good care of him. The dog got run over about a year or so later. But I digress. Exercise sucks.

I think you're right. I'd love some new eyes, for example. Or an exoskeleton so I could jump high.

But...they're still going via the medium of technology instead of face to face or even talking on the phone. And often not socialising with friends, just scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, looking at Youtube videos or something. Preferring to play with their phones than interact with humans.

It depends on the technology, I suppose they might invent something which the human body doesn't reject, or even put the brain into a cyborg body. Hopefully that's very far in the future though.

Hopefully everyone will get bored of screens one day then...

I totally agree that we probably won't make it through the coming environmental crisis, humans will be decimated and we'll be forced to return to simpler living. There is a very fin de siècle feel about the current era.

Either that or we'll have to go into space to escape the broken Earth. In which case, being cyborgs will be a huge advantage because human bodies can't stand too much of space.

Someone said they wondered why the billionaires, Musk, Bezos etc. keep going into space...are they looking at our new home, which may be Mars?

If we do survive, we will probably be a lot more philosophical and maybe become more zen.

There, there.

Yes, I was like that as a child- preferred reading, staying indoors etc. However, I spent a healthy lot of time outside, up a tree, running round the garden with my friends play acting. Such happy days.

I seem to remember you telling that Santa story before, it was pretty cruel of your parents wasn't it.

I found these figures on Wiki. Pretty shocking to see how the human population has ballooned recently. It took until 1804 AD to even reach 1 billion people! Now we're at 8 billion...When I met my husband 30 years ago, we were only at 6 billion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_pop ... milestones

World population milestones went unnoticed until the 19th century, since there was no reliable data on global population dynamics.

It is estimated that the population of the world reached

one billion for the first time in 1804;
two billion in 1927, 123 years later;
three billion in 1960, 33 years later;
four billion in 1974, 14 years later;
five billion in 1987, 13 years later;
six billion in 1999, 12 years later;
seven billion in October 2011 or March 2012 (depending on different estimates),[3] 12 or 13 years later;
eight billion in November 2022, 10 or 11 years later.

Also, I note that humans have often nearly been wiped out in the past. This list of epidemics is very interesting. See that the Black Death and other plagues killed half the world's population.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics

For example, look at the population of England in this table. You will clearly see the years the English population halved and you can guess why. And see how long it took for the population to get back to the previous level...

Population 1100–1700

Year Pop. ±%

1086 1,710,000 —
1190 3,100,000 +81.3%
1220 3,970,000 +28.1%
1250 4,230,000 +6.5
1279 4,430,000 +4.7%
1290 4,750,000 +7.2%
1315 4,690,000 −1.3%
1325 4,120,000 −12.2%
1348 4,810,000 +16.7%
1351 2,600,000 −45.9%
1377 2,500,000 −3.8%
1400 2,080,000 −16.8%
1430 2,020,000 −2.9%
1450 1,900,000 −5.9%
1490 2,140,000 +12.6%
1522 2,350,000 +9.8%
1541 2,830,000 +20.4%
1560 3,200,000 +13.1%
1600 4,110,000 +28.4%
1650 5,310,000 +29.2%
1700 5,200,000 −2.1%


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demograph ... population

I've just thought of another reason we are cyborgs now. We don't have friends anymore. We all seem to be powering along our own track doing our own thing.

In the past, people had groups of friends. I did. My parents did. It was normal. But in the last decade or so, people seem to have separated. Most people I know online don't have any real life friends. I have one real life friend and she doesn't have any other real life friends. Most people I talk to don't have a group of friends.

We seem to be losing our socialising skills and becoming loners. Hm...