Re: Can you imagine a time....

[Kris Krieger]

Pat wrote in news: [e-mail]:

>> ....say as little as 50 years from now when people will voluntarily >> have their extremities removed because prosthetics will be far >> superior to the hindrances you were born with? >> Computer driven with all the bells and whistles with 1000gb of ram >> and the > >> ability to do that which even young people cannot do. >> Run 1 minute miles with Michelin treads on your dawgz. >> Read Britannica in 2 minutes. >> Before going to bed you will program your extremities for the events >> of th > e >> following day so that you might get done all of the things you had >> planned > . >> 120 wpm? right. >> Why not 9000 words per minute? >> Write 300 emails in 3 seconds. >> Just sit there and watch it happen. >> Think it and its done. >> Artificial eyes that allow you to browse 500 blogs simultaneously and >> reta > in >> everything in your outboard ram which filters into your 1000 >> terrabyte swappable HD. >> Nobody has time for grocery shopping anymore, get your chemical fix >> online > >> via USB 12.0. >> Wanna buzz, hit F115. >> The spine is the cortex, imagine flexible ribs, where with the blink >> of an > >> eye you can *swim*, underwater, to europe, in 15 minutes. >> Faster than flying, and no cavity searches. >> What cavities? >> The ones packed with loonies of course. > > I think you've watched "The Matrix" one too many times. >

OTOH, I wouldn't mind a new knee at some point ;)

Some portable RAM wouldn't be bad, either, but don't they call that "a laptop"...?

Actually, all of this stuff (and the popular enchantment with doing the proverbial, if aprocyphal, "lemming thing") has long been a staple of Speculative Fiction and "SciFi", so at least some people have been pondering th etopic for a quite a few years.

[Kris Krieger]

"Don" wrote in news: [e-mail]:

ANd when it all starts getting arthritic and creaky and achy (think about the poor folks suffering with things like Rheumatoid Arthritis - not

*that*is a tough row to hoe...), I can well imagine that an advnaced prosthetic that gives a person molbility would be preferable to being confined to a chair.

THere is no clear either-or here - it's similar to "steroids" (basically, testosterone). If one has hypogonadism, esp. if young, taking testosterone to maintain normal physiological levels is a matter of health. OTOH, someone who takes enough to reach many times the normal physiological level is asking for trouble, because one *can* get "too much of a good thing". You also can die from drinking too much water, really.

Humans have had the power to create their own nightmares pretty much since the human brain *became* human. THey also have the capacity to create their own paradise. Technology is merely the latest permutation, and expression, of that ability.

[Kris Krieger]

"Don" wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Actually, I might be wrong but I didn't think that was possible, due to hydrodynamics and th e density of water...

Shoot, I wouldn't mind a new knee myself.

I think that the important delineation is not so much the body parts replacement, but the notion of replacing that which makes us human - the defnition of which is something that philosophy, science, religion, and pretty much everyone, still argue...

THe question is, at what point does a technology pass from making a person be able to live more humanly, to making people less human? It's complex, especially given that people aer already quite adept, even without any technology, at making themselves less Human.

[Kris Krieger]

"Don" wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Ugh, my sympathies - that must make getting around really difficult; one of my friends has arthritic hips, and it's a struggle.

Surgery is never something one should choose lightly, because there are risks in both the surgery, and the anaesthesia - the main thing is to go to the best surgeon possible.

Operations can be rough to watch, because most people aren't trained to see past the bleeding in surgery, and to realize that there is far less in surgery than there is on injury or butchery - surgical techniques seek to minimize blood loss.

Once you get past that aspect, tho', the mechanics are fascinating.

My main worry, in your situation, would be the ability to find a top surgeon, simply becasue you're so far out from any major medical center. You might have to travel a ways...

[Kris Krieger]

"Don" wrote in news: [e-mail]:

[snip]

THat's good at least.

THat kind of sucks. I know the thing about "soldiering through it", but all in all, pain, well, sucks.

Holy crap! I just have some arthritis. What you have sounds dangerous, if it goes out when you're 40' up a ladder or something.

I'm pretty sure there are methods of dealing with that, but I unfortunately don't know any of the specifics.

I guess it is pretty bothersome to most people. I guess that with most people, the body *is* teh self, at least to a alrge degree, but to me, it's more like an often-annoying biological machine that my brain rides around in.

The reconstructive part doesn't get me too badly becasue I know that it's being done to fix the problem, but the worst thing I ever saw during OR rotation (yes, as bizarre as it seems, I actually tried 2 years of nursing school...) was an amputation, because that wasn't a repair, but a removal, and this guy could neve rafford a well-functioning prosthetic, meaning he'd be in a wheelschair - so the situation was not good.

FOr me, it's sort of a "traink wreck" thing I guess - it's kind of gruesome, from the aspect of post-surgical pain, relating to the post-op mental thing of having been "invaded" (esp. with abdominal surgery), and all of that human stuff - and yet at the same time, it's just also kind of fascinating from the "mechanics shop" angle and actually, when I was going in for abdominal surgery, I actually asked whether they could give mem a combination of locals and a spinal, and set up a mirror so I could watch - a request which they of course rejected ;)

And unfortunately, the older you get, the riskier surgery gets, because you react differently to the anaesthesia and both eht healing processes and the immune sytem slow down with age.

[Kris Krieger]

"Don" wrote in news: [e-mail]:

I think that's why it was so hard to watch - I couldn't even begin to know what the guy would be going through. Even when people adapt really well to a prosthesis, there is still a definite period of loss/mourning. Some people do adapt successfully and admirably, but that doesn't mean it's easy for them, or something to be taken lightly.

Yes. I've forgottn the exact mechanism, but you're right about the phenomenon. THere is what's called Phantom Pain, where poepl eexperience bad and even excrutiating pain in the part that's gone, and it' salso common for people to forget, esp. upon waking, that a limb is gone, so falling is a common source of injury, because the brain still feels the limb is intact.

Same here.

OTOH, there is also a psychological condition, a type of body dysphoria, where people suffer depressiona nd so on until an offending limb or body part is removed, after which they feel happy and fulfilled. It's easy to dismiss it as "loonie", but the theory is that there is some sort of functional/structural thing going on in the brain that causes it.

I also saw something about a man (I can't read as much as I used to but I still watch too many medical shows...) who experienced excrutiating pain in his feet to the extent that he could barely even rest his feet on the foot-supports of a wheelchair. None of th edoctors he saw could figure out a cause and dismissed him as "making it all up". Eventually, he got them amputated and got prosthetics, and could walk an dget around normally and was then completely happy.

One person's hell is another person's heaven, I guess.