prostethics: used as substitutes for real limbs of flesh and blood. The mechanic counterparts were always unwhole, strange, unnatural, robotic pieces of compensation, for what was real, for what should have been there.
Now it looks like the table is turning, slowly but surely. Not only do prosthetics nowadays approach the behaviour and abilities of flesh and blood limbs in a much more accurate way than the wooden leg of captain Hook did, but they can even exceed them, and add new features (the "Terminator arm")
Other than that, I would love to have a camera in my head. I would sacrifice one of my eyes, for sure. They're pretty big so it should probably work well. As far as the surveillance - sou-veillance society is concerned - I don't know. The camera eye is definitely a fully integrated interface. Which could mean that a human being is used as a surveillance camera, of course. But it stretches much further than that. Other data could be called up, one could wire up an iphone to the camera eye and fix up data in realtime. Or layers of augmented reality.
An exciting new era has started. Donna Haraway has never been out, but she's more present than ever. It's not purely coincidental that an athlete with two prosthetic legs just successfully participated in the Olympics. The first cyborg victory, and a start sign to whatever will be next. Will my grandparents need that artificial hip, or will they just go for a brand new set of rabbit legs that will give them the force to hop on forever? How will my generation grow old? Will we at some point have a moment in our lives when we decide to go bionic, and just float on into eternity with our bodies made of light and steel?
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