I suppose the first step was the double-network hydro gel put into my left knee when it started bothering me after hikes. That was quite a while ago and seems rather trivial. But it was the first of many trivial things that have added up to something more. Something that has made me feel as though I am not quite the same species I was born as. The history of biology has been a story of gradual changes where a species morphs into another in terms of thousands of generations where a single generation does not know that it is one of those steps. Bearing witness to such a change in the scope of my own life is awe inspiring.
It was nine years later when fabrication of new materials using nano-scale assembly methods was really exploding. These had in the past been applied to improving simple computing devices, but soon materials that could be used in the body started to become available. And I was quick to take part in these new possibilities. Millions of tiny scrubbers were injected into my arteries to clear away decades of plaque buildup by breaking it down into tiny particles that my body can clear out. A reinforced porous calcium phosphate bone material was used to transform some of my leg and arm bones. This had no amazing benefits, but just curbed some of the frailty creeping into my arms and legs. I could not transform my femurs or humerus at first because at that time synthetic blood cells were not perfected and the lack of bone marrow would be too detrimental. That situation would change with a much more extensive system soon though, but next I turned my focus to the mind.
I had been following closely advancements being made in brain implants, and was quick to take advantage of the first brain computer interface augmentation implant that became widely available. After all the exciting developments in our understanding of human brain signaling, it seemed to take forever to bring a product to market that took advantage of it. But when it came, it was quite a shift. This single implant not only allowed me direct wireless interface to control my computer with thoughts, but also a digital memory to carry around and access at any time with a thought. Some people think that as soon as you augment your mind, you are no longer human, but I don't think so. The brain may be the seat of our consciousness, but it does not define humanity, it only makes us aware of it.
I was also approaching that age where hearing and sight begins to degrade significantly and decided it was time to look into my options. By that time they had started incorporating some interesting features into the available cybernetic auditory and visual replacement systems. Volume control and frequency range adjustment for the auditory system along with playback from neural implant capability for both. Some of the eye-cams that were new at the time had just developed the ability to have some nice zooming and alternate spectrum analysis modules. Super hearing and infrared night vision I can switch on at will via wireless neural implant integration was irresistible to me.
Next came the release of something that gave many of us cause to stop and think. A complete synthetic replacement for the pulmonary and coronary circulation systems; blood, heart, and lungs. Some of the most critical and early failing parts of our bodies – prime targets for amelioration. Being very much not a fan of periodic regenerative heart tissue injection therapies, I was excited to jump in and have them literally rip my guts out. I think after this procedure was when I first truly felt I had changed my body beyond anything that could be considered a simple augmentation. The systems that are the most critical basis for sustaining my existence had been changed. I felt different – and not just physically, my mind shifted as well. It's as if the relationship between me and my body became one step detached, like a feeling of it being a vessel or tool rather than part of what defines me.
I didn't want to just keep my body healthy, I wanted more. I wanted to upgrade my body. Why simply perpetuate it when you can improve it? That was even what I thought about so much with replacing my body's engine, but didn't talk about so much. Sure a synthetic heart and lungs will last ten times as long, but that's not the best part. The best part is that it is ten times as efficient too. This lets you do amazing things. Stamina and endurance beyond human capability. I found that it can also be rather dangerous as well, but they came up with a solution to that too.
When your body is much faster and stronger than it's structure was ever designed to support, it's easy to break things. Many people found this out the hard way despite the warnings, myself among them. An overzealous jump left we with a broken femur. Later, a misjudged turn when running way faster than I should have been left we with quite a concussion and damaged neural implant that had to be replaced. Not only the accidents, but the joints in the body were just not meant to endure such activity. With my blood now synthetic and not only replacing, but eliminating the efforts of my bone marrow blood factory, there was little to deter me from undergoing full skeletal replacement.
Now, a full skeletal replacement is not so much replacing your bones as it is taking the rest of you and hanging it on something else. This has to be done gradually of course, but with regenerative healing agents you can recover from each step so quickly that with an aggressive schedule even in the early days of this procedure, it could be done within months. We couldn't take the opportunity to change our appearance with an altered bone structure then though. Just a straight copy of the old skeleton but stronger. Too much complication in the muscular adjustments that hadn't been refined yet. I may have looked the same afterwards, but felt like something else. In a subtle way. The slight weight difference, the feeling of not being quite so dense. You would think you couldn't tell, but it's unmistakable. Imagine the difference you would feel in holding a hard plastic rubber filled pipe and a metal pipe. Both the same shape, similar weight – but completely different.
At this point there was not much left of my original body, but still some important organs including the largest one – skin. That, my muscles, nervous system including the biological part of my brain, and the network of veins my synthetic blood was pumping through was about it. Now, I realize that today it's quite common for people to have quite different types of skin or other integuments that you may not be able to really call skin at all. For myself though, I've always been partial to our original. It blends with our home planets environment, it is an earth tone itself the natural colors of our skin. I've always been fond of earth tones. So when I was ready to put the nuisance of bruising and muscle fatigue behind me, I chose a traditional skin meant to model the original. My body was now an easily delineated three components. My biological brain and nervous system I was born with, the synthetic body it was was attached to, and my ancillary organs responsible for processing food and reproduction.
I've not made any other changes. I was unconcerned with reproduction, and our bodies' natural method of generating energy is not all that bad and easily maintainable. I find the intricate web of connections between my brain and the rest of me to be something I'm rather fond of the way it is. Am I still human? I think so. I've really done little more than renovate. I still have all the same senses that are manifested by the connection of my nerves to the rest of my body. Those parts of my body may be made of something different or perform better or in additional ways, but they interact the same way.
Some people insist on being all “natural” and using only cell regenerative therapies to stay functional. That seems to me like refusing to upgrade to a new version of a computer program because you don't understand the new features. They seem to think that there is something sacred about our form and that it defines us as human only when not enhanced. I wonder how human they will think they are celebrating birthdays approaching the beginning of their third century of life. That is just the way part of my generation thinks though, still tied to a past in which all this was inconceivable. I suppose I have taken on the viewpoint of generation Z. That is that you must continuously adapt and approach the future that comes with an open mind or be left behind. Left behind with the other generations, the ones that actually ended. There are no new generations after Z because there is no reason for Z to die and anyone else that is born is a part of it. We of generation Y or the “net generation”, can join them – or die off.
It was nine years later when fabrication of new materials using nano-scale assembly methods was really exploding. These had in the past been applied to improving simple computing devices, but soon materials that could be used in the body started to become available. And I was quick to take part in these new possibilities. Millions of tiny scrubbers were injected into my arteries to clear away decades of plaque buildup by breaking it down into tiny particles that my body can clear out. A reinforced porous calcium phosphate bone material was used to transform some of my leg and arm bones. This had no amazing benefits, but just curbed some of the frailty creeping into my arms and legs. I could not transform my femurs or humerus at first because at that time synthetic blood cells were not perfected and the lack of bone marrow would be too detrimental. That situation would change with a much more extensive system soon though, but next I turned my focus to the mind.
I had been following closely advancements being made in brain implants, and was quick to take advantage of the first brain computer interface augmentation implant that became widely available. After all the exciting developments in our understanding of human brain signaling, it seemed to take forever to bring a product to market that took advantage of it. But when it came, it was quite a shift. This single implant not only allowed me direct wireless interface to control my computer with thoughts, but also a digital memory to carry around and access at any time with a thought. Some people think that as soon as you augment your mind, you are no longer human, but I don't think so. The brain may be the seat of our consciousness, but it does not define humanity, it only makes us aware of it.
I was also approaching that age where hearing and sight begins to degrade significantly and decided it was time to look into my options. By that time they had started incorporating some interesting features into the available cybernetic auditory and visual replacement systems. Volume control and frequency range adjustment for the auditory system along with playback from neural implant capability for both. Some of the eye-cams that were new at the time had just developed the ability to have some nice zooming and alternate spectrum analysis modules. Super hearing and infrared night vision I can switch on at will via wireless neural implant integration was irresistible to me.
Next came the release of something that gave many of us cause to stop and think. A complete synthetic replacement for the pulmonary and coronary circulation systems; blood, heart, and lungs. Some of the most critical and early failing parts of our bodies – prime targets for amelioration. Being very much not a fan of periodic regenerative heart tissue injection therapies, I was excited to jump in and have them literally rip my guts out. I think after this procedure was when I first truly felt I had changed my body beyond anything that could be considered a simple augmentation. The systems that are the most critical basis for sustaining my existence had been changed. I felt different – and not just physically, my mind shifted as well. It's as if the relationship between me and my body became one step detached, like a feeling of it being a vessel or tool rather than part of what defines me.
I didn't want to just keep my body healthy, I wanted more. I wanted to upgrade my body. Why simply perpetuate it when you can improve it? That was even what I thought about so much with replacing my body's engine, but didn't talk about so much. Sure a synthetic heart and lungs will last ten times as long, but that's not the best part. The best part is that it is ten times as efficient too. This lets you do amazing things. Stamina and endurance beyond human capability. I found that it can also be rather dangerous as well, but they came up with a solution to that too.
When your body is much faster and stronger than it's structure was ever designed to support, it's easy to break things. Many people found this out the hard way despite the warnings, myself among them. An overzealous jump left we with a broken femur. Later, a misjudged turn when running way faster than I should have been left we with quite a concussion and damaged neural implant that had to be replaced. Not only the accidents, but the joints in the body were just not meant to endure such activity. With my blood now synthetic and not only replacing, but eliminating the efforts of my bone marrow blood factory, there was little to deter me from undergoing full skeletal replacement.
Now, a full skeletal replacement is not so much replacing your bones as it is taking the rest of you and hanging it on something else. This has to be done gradually of course, but with regenerative healing agents you can recover from each step so quickly that with an aggressive schedule even in the early days of this procedure, it could be done within months. We couldn't take the opportunity to change our appearance with an altered bone structure then though. Just a straight copy of the old skeleton but stronger. Too much complication in the muscular adjustments that hadn't been refined yet. I may have looked the same afterwards, but felt like something else. In a subtle way. The slight weight difference, the feeling of not being quite so dense. You would think you couldn't tell, but it's unmistakable. Imagine the difference you would feel in holding a hard plastic rubber filled pipe and a metal pipe. Both the same shape, similar weight – but completely different.
At this point there was not much left of my original body, but still some important organs including the largest one – skin. That, my muscles, nervous system including the biological part of my brain, and the network of veins my synthetic blood was pumping through was about it. Now, I realize that today it's quite common for people to have quite different types of skin or other integuments that you may not be able to really call skin at all. For myself though, I've always been partial to our original. It blends with our home planets environment, it is an earth tone itself the natural colors of our skin. I've always been fond of earth tones. So when I was ready to put the nuisance of bruising and muscle fatigue behind me, I chose a traditional skin meant to model the original. My body was now an easily delineated three components. My biological brain and nervous system I was born with, the synthetic body it was was attached to, and my ancillary organs responsible for processing food and reproduction.
I've not made any other changes. I was unconcerned with reproduction, and our bodies' natural method of generating energy is not all that bad and easily maintainable. I find the intricate web of connections between my brain and the rest of me to be something I'm rather fond of the way it is. Am I still human? I think so. I've really done little more than renovate. I still have all the same senses that are manifested by the connection of my nerves to the rest of my body. Those parts of my body may be made of something different or perform better or in additional ways, but they interact the same way.
Some people insist on being all “natural” and using only cell regenerative therapies to stay functional. That seems to me like refusing to upgrade to a new version of a computer program because you don't understand the new features. They seem to think that there is something sacred about our form and that it defines us as human only when not enhanced. I wonder how human they will think they are celebrating birthdays approaching the beginning of their third century of life. That is just the way part of my generation thinks though, still tied to a past in which all this was inconceivable. I suppose I have taken on the viewpoint of generation Z. That is that you must continuously adapt and approach the future that comes with an open mind or be left behind. Left behind with the other generations, the ones that actually ended. There are no new generations after Z because there is no reason for Z to die and anyone else that is born is a part of it. We of generation Y or the “net generation”, can join them – or die off.
nice.
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