In theory, I wouldn’t hesitate one second to replace a substantial amount of my body with chrome — legs, arms, internal organs, eyes, etc — but I think actually going through with removing a healthy bodypart that I didn’t hate and has served me well enough would be difficult. Nevertheless I don’t think I’d really regret having gotten it done, so it’d just be like any other big scary surgery.

I don’t think I’d want to do whole-body biotech upgrades like increasing muscle density or nervous system efficiency or whatever, because that effects a lot of things, so it’s both more invasive and could have a lot more accidental unintended consequences. I’d probably start with replacing my left arm with a cybernetic one, since that’s my off hand so I won’t miss it as much if something goes wrong. Then use that as a platform to tinker and experiment and decide if I want to go further.

As for what kind of chrome I’d want to chip — I want the simplest, sturdiest, most robust thing that can possibly work, something I can understand as completely as possible, something that I can at least somewhat repair and upgrade myself, something that’s well-known for reliability. Nothing super flashy with a lot of moving parts so its flimsy and unreliable, I want the PineTime or ThinkPad T420 of cyberware. And of course I’d flash it with open source firmware and remove all the corpo software and tracking I could!

I’d be a lot more careful about modifying my brain, for two reasons.

First of all, my theory of personal identity / consciousness is that the sense of coherent, singular identity doesn’t come from a single, constant set of essential characteristics — whether physical or psychological — but from there being a sufficient resemblance between yourself prior to any given change and yourself after any given change, and a coherent self-narrative pathway from one to the other so that you can reconcile the two. Yourself at 20 and yourself at 35 can have completely different interests, beliefs, neural pathways, memories (our memories falsify over time, after all), and whatever else, but it’s still you — how? Because you got there by a step by step process where you remained you between each change, and so by the transitive property, you’re still you at the end, even if you’re completely different now. If A ≈ B, and B ≈ C, and C ≈ D, then A ≈ D, even if A and D are completely different, because they’ve got this web of other things connecting them. Thus, if I’m going to maintain my sense of being myself, instead of accidentally killing myself off, I’m going to have to do any modifications of my brain slowly, step by step, and adjust to each one before getting the next one.

Which works out, because of my second point: if an implant in your brain goes wrong, its WAY, WAY, WAAAAAY worse than if something goes wrong with your body. Like, brain damage is no joke kids, I’m dealing with the fallout of it right now and it is not fun. And of course, as we all know, tech fails. A lot. It’s buggy as shit. It’s often pushed out the door before it’s ready. It has vulnerabilities. So I’d want to keep the brain mods minimal if I did any at all — tried and true, tested, resiliant, as simple as possible, and not connected to the 'net.

Ever since I first saw augmentations stuff in cyberpunk media or likewise I’ve always wanted to get it. Get cool new arms, get eyes that can zoom in or whatever, maybe lungs to help with stamina, etc. But when I actually think about doing it, I dunno if I could go through with it. Like eyes would probably be an obvious choice for me, but thinking about actually having that done freaks me out a little.
It’d be a different matter if it needed replacing I think, rather than replacing them purely to be better. If I was gonna be blind, I think I’d take augmentated eyes in a heartbeat, same for any other part of my body. Though perhaps if we ever do get there, seeing other people do it might make the prospect less scary for me to replace healthy parts.

Oh and also hope we don’t need any anti-rejections drugs like the Deus Ex prequels…

All the way. I’ve just found someone irl to start putting implants under my skin, and that’s already more exciting to me than anything else in my life. I’m not very tied to being made of meat, so as soon as I can legally have my left arm replaced with a robotic prosthetic that functions just as well or better, I will.

Nothing in my brain. Anything else is fair game, but I’d prefer to remain mostly human-looking. A “sleeper build”, so to speak. I’d probably focus on improving sensory acuity and strength/resiliency.

Full package. Replace everything you can, doc. Done with flesh’s limits. Immortality through tech.

I think I would only go as far as I can understand the tech myself since it would make me open to a lot of new vulnerabilities (hacking, warranty issues…) and depending on how invasive the procedure is. My eyes are fine and my body is too for the moment so I would probably start augmenting at an older age. But if we enter an age of cognitive augmentations I would definitely start there since if you wouldn’t “keep up” you would be left behind. Imagine how people with faster computation times would live in this world compared to others (silicon VS flesh) I believe it would be similar to high frequency trading where every second counts but just implicating all aspects of life…

I think I’d start with augmentations that allowed my body to realize it’s full potential as designed - first, start with efficiency and longevity gains of major organs and then maybe dig deeper to gain control over my internal operating system to unlock enhancements such as pain center management, improved hearing and vision, faster reflexes, and maybe memory management augmentations. I’d also invest in organ replacements that solve some of my current medical problems. I’d probably start here, actually.

Once the full potential of my augmented standard human frame has been reached, then I’d explore more full limb or systemic replacements to become more than human (cyber legs, internal weapons/tools), and possibly explore any bodily self-expression modifications.

I think the speed of my adoption would depend on whether this tech were available as implants or nanotech, and what the potential for cyberpsychosis impact would be.

If I could be in a fully ideal synthetic/robot body I would.

As for the whole brain-consciousness issue, and if I can go as fictional as I want, I’d let the equivalent of fluid nanobots very VERY slowly replace my brain cells with electronics. I’m talking 5-10 years. That way there’s no real debate on if my “true” self died during the transfer to an artificial brain.

I would fix my slightly myopic eyes (even though I could do that already I haven’t got round to it), and probably get some chips implanted to maximise brain power.

i enjoy being able to touch and feel things, and enjoy being healthy, so probably nothing that seriously impacts my senses or health

From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the Blessed Machine. Your kind cling to your flesh, as though it will not decay and fail you.

That’s far too open of a premise.

There is surely a point where humanity is minimized. Our glandular systems are too intertwined with our brains for us to imagine a simplistic singularity.

My partner has fully synthetic lenses in both eyes, and is thus a greater cyborg than I, merely wearing glasses. I’m still arguably the less human one.

That being said, I’d replace anything relating to the (rapidly deteriorating) purely physical parts of my body, as well as whatever’s in charge of my drug addiction. But this is all just wish fulfillment territory.

For me, the apprehension is never the tech but who’s installing it. Think about how hard it is just to find a solid mechanic you can trust, how much harder it is to find a good doctor, then combine the search in what amounts to downtown Baltimore a la The Wire plus cyberpsychos and runner gangs. I can barely trust people with paperwork most of the damn time.

However, let’s say I’ve come into some luck and got my hands on an Auto Doc. Definitely going for nervous system enhancements to increase neurotransmitter efficiency. That should hit a bunch of benefits at once, including theoretically increasing intelligence. Would definitely lean into a sleeper/stealth loadout for myself, so monowire and Netrunning/Social Engineering augs like the Social Enhancer from Deus Ex. Increased muscle density and cardiovascular reinforcement for when I need to get physical or dip in a pinch. Military-grade augs for infrared vision, drone control, nanites for overall physical maintenance/streamlining, and software/hardware hardening. Would definitely lean into eventually becoming a ghost floating between custom bodies once I’ve built up a decent stockpile of dosh. Then it’s all about amassing knowledge and passing the time, maybe getting back in the fray occasionally to stir the pot. Keep my finger on the pulse.

I’d want the full package, but I’d need to be conscious for the brain part. Not 100% how to do that, but any break in consciousness for any type of brain “transfer” is going to drive the existential crisis of if the new robot brain is me or if the corpse that used to hold everything that was me is me. I feel like if I’m able to maintain consciousness through maybe some sort of nanomachine changing small parts of your brain at a time I can reasonably convince myself I’m me once the process is said and done.

I feel like an ill-equipped defective robot now, so I’d have my brain put into a mechanical body if it had nerve connection and took care of nutrients/respiration/immunity etc better/easier than now. Especially if I could be the size of a toaster but hook into bigger/different forms/devices easily. Also give me VR-headspace downtime.

I’d go for cryonics too if I could, if there was some contract with anybody that I’d be helping with betterment rather than profit. Sea or space would be cool.

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