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jpk
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Location: Tazewell, East Tennessee, USA
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 Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 11:49 pm Post subject: |
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I have a friend who happens to be a dentist and a hopeless research geek. Apparently, there's a nontrivial number of people who get dental implants who have to have them removed for psychological reasons. Reported issues vary from "it just felt wrong" to "I can feel the post burrowing around, trying to get rid of the rest of the real teeth so I have to get more implants."*
Once I foolishly asked her for clarification, and the ensuing block of time that I cannot fully recall included stories of people with psychological rejections of other prosthetics, including one man who was being stalked by his optional hook that could be used in place of his Sunday-go-to-meeting prosthetic hand. That was an unfortunate case of a psychological issue meshing with an unnoticed "if lost, please return to"* sort of tag on the hook base.
*Yes, I am indeed misusing these quotes. The text is not meant to represent exact quotes, but instead to bunch up the text for easier parsing of the paraphrasing. Clarity is king, baby, uh-huh. |
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Zadmar
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| Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2012 3:19 am Post subject: |
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| jpk wrote: | | Once I foolishly asked her for clarification, and the ensuing block of time that I cannot fully recall included stories of people with psychological rejections of other prosthetics, including one man who was being stalked by his optional hook that could be used in place of his Sunday-go-to-meeting prosthetic hand. |
If he'd had a cybernetic hand, such concerns could be well-founded  |
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Sitting Duck
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| Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2012 7:13 am Post subject: |
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| Zadmar wrote: | | Then I think back over my first Cyberspace character, and wonder what sort of person he was to have willingly had his arms and legs amputated and replaced with cybernetic limbs, his eyes exchanged with cybernetic eyes that were linked to implants inserted into his brain, subdermal padding inserted under every part of his skin, and numerous other implants. He was even hoping to have his head removed and replaced with something tougher! |
Back during Second Edition, there was a Shadowrun book called Cybertechnology, which included a narrative where the person in question talked about his path towards taking in more and more cyberware.
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OSIAdept
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jpk
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| Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2012 11:04 am Post subject: |
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| OSIAdept wrote: | | but what about nano-tech implants hmm. would they effect someones sense of self. xpecially if they are only scripted molecular chains of silicon or some other type of material depending on the type of implant. |
If you're prone to that sort of worry and you've got partially self-aware machines running around inside your body doing whatever it is they want to do completely without your input, all the time, when you're awake, when you're asleep, when you're with someone, when you're otherwise alone, possibly receiving commands and signals from the manufacturer without your knowledge to further the manufacturer's ends...
Honestly, I can see where you might be able to talk someone into cyberpsychosis just by convincing them they have nanites without actually having nanites! |
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OSIAdept
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OSIAdept
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jpk
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| Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2012 1:20 pm Post subject: |
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Your ability to distinguish between programming and awareness suggests you're currently not suffering from a psychological affliction which would cause you to get them wrong.
It's fairly rare for the "currently undamaged" to go "oh, sure, I get how people could get all buggy like that." It's kind of the nature of the beast.
Then again, that may not be saying good things about me, and I probably ought to shut up.  |
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VonDan
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| Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2012 1:53 pm Post subject: |
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Back in the late 50's and 60's when the terms cybernetics and cyborg were coined there was real scientific thought that man might not be able to travel into space with out the need of cybernetic implants. An example was one line of research wondered if the human heart could pump in the absence of gravity and would a heart pump be needed.
Science fiction of the time picked up on that and there were stories of men who had been transformed to work in space. They always felt permanently detached from society and human contact and often left there past lives behind.
I remember one story described being in a cyborged body as the feeling you have walking around with a fever and head cold feeling detached like you watching your self do stuff but not feeling it
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jpk
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| Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2012 1:56 pm Post subject: |
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There was some considerable hysteria about cars traveling too fast for humans to survive the strain as well, completely ignoring the fact that horses could easily go faster than most early cars.
We're not really a rational species.  |
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OSIAdept
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jpk
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| Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2012 2:03 pm Post subject: |
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| OSIAdept wrote: | | makes me womder why legitimate cyber docs never ran a psyche test on potential patiens like how many plastic surgens will conduct a pre-patient interview |
I think "many" is the key issue here. Most cyber-issues crop up in dystopias, where the drive for money, power, or safety is the big thing in the world the players are circulating in, and so that tends to drive their cyber-physicians more than security, safety, and caution. Those guys are working with clients who don't have to, you know, adventure for a living. |
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VonDan
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| Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2012 2:04 pm Post subject: |
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| OSIAdept wrote: | | makes me wonder why legitimate cyber docs never ran a psyche test on potential patients like how many plastic surgens will conduct a pre-patient interview |
Some day when it comes to that they should. That was a major plot point of Robo Cop he was the only one so transformed who had the psyche profile to endure it
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OSIAdept
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Cryonic
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| Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2012 9:05 pm Post subject: |
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| OSIAdept wrote: | | i would not consider programming as being self-aware. though i could see a kinda paranoia associated with n-tech implants espescially since they are so pervasive in the settng. |
And where do you draw the line between programming and intelligence? SIRI is just programming, yet people practically have conversations with it... We, though biological in nature, are just preprogrammed machines. We take in stimuli and react to it. Over time those reactions adjust the base machine and the feedback continues...
If we weren't preprogrammed, then certain regions of the brain wouldn't be predisposed to processing certain kinds of information (language, faces, colors, shapes, motion, sound, memory, etc...).
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OSIAdept
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OSIAdept
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Dracones
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| Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2012 8:59 am Post subject: |
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I think trying to find a science angle for cyberpsychosis is a bit of a stretch. It's a literary thing. Cyberpunk, aka the mirrorshades movement, came about in the 80's as a combination of things. The happy drug culture of the 70's gone dark, the rise of corporatism in the 80's, AIDs, the space shuttle, punk rock, personal computers and the beginning of the internet.
It's hard to remember how new many of the above things were at the time. Cyberpsychosis was more of a individual's expression of our common loss of humanity in the name of progress. It was a way to express the fear that "all this new crap" would erode our humanity and turn us into The Machine.
A lot of the cyberpunk ideas feel dated today. Humans in space is all but a dead idea, AIDs just sort of slowly faded from the public eye, people don't really talk about crack cocaine anymore, drugs are sort of just a part of society. I mean, we have shows like Breaking Bad where you root for the "bad guy". The internet, instead of creating this new realm for the human mind, has become a medium for porn and cat videos. Personal computers aren't anything to get excited about these days, our phones are more powerful than mainframes in the 80's were, and corporations have sort of plateaued in how "evil" they are. They're basically just playing the same games they did 30 years ago. Microsoft didn't form a private army and take over Seattle or anything.
I think Cyberpunk really needs to find trends and ideas that express today a little better. I'm not sure if cyberpsychosis really fits that. |
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OSIAdept
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| Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2012 12:06 pm Post subject: |
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Honestly we live in a post-cyberpunk age and my setting reflects that. It is no where near as bad as some of the predicted worlds.
Corporations are in charge but it actually works, i mean honestly if a coporation/goverment abuses their workers/citizen past a certain point they are going to rebel it is the inevitable path. To circumvent this corporations treat their citizens/workers with a certain level of respect. From the lowly janitor to the ceo they are treated with the respect equal to their standing in the company.
There is still corruption as with any system but not so blantant like in many cyberpunk environments.
So with this in mind n-tech implants are highly scrutinized. If cyberpsychosis comes up it is simply a literary vehicle for conflict or story progression.
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Culverin
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| Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2012 12:30 pm Post subject: Feasability |
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| I don't know if that last part is really feasible. If you have an established hierarchy, people will submit to abuses almost beyond proportion. I think that is half the point of conflict in a cyberpunk setting. Neo-imperialism is part of every "punk" setting (or at least most of them). I think you might need a new term for a setting with cyberpunk technology, but not cyberpunk politics. And without a really convincing backstory, I think your explanation would come across as a little too utopian. |
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