Only if they’re open source, and even then its a big if.

It would need to have a firewall, only allowing outgoing requests

Absolutely not

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60416058

These people permanently changed their bodies in ways that will have lifelong impacts (as one example they can never have an MRI) just to be abandoned.

If you’re going to trust a corporation to casually touch your brain, you’re not using it, so you should do it!

As much as the weakness of flesh disgusts me, I wouldn’t touch cybernetics with a ten foot pole, unless they corrected a major disability/were lifesaving.

Only if the software stack was GPLv3 licensed (or whichever was the most aggressive version of the license) and the computational hardware was reasonably open as well, preferably completely open like RISC and maybe a fully open UEFI.

I need to trust anything that is going to become part of me.

I’ve been fixing machines long enough to know I don’t want to. Flesh is weak, but flesh adapts. It also doesn’t get an internet connection, which means I get to sleep at night.

Edit: Thought about this a little more. I think a better frame for this question is whether or not you’re comfortable accepting the flaws and limitations inherent in our bodies as they are. Obviously I, as an able-bodied person, am more comfortable accepting that my body isn’t perfect. Someone with significant disabilities wouldn’t hesitate to fix what causes them pain, discomfort, or applies cruel limits to the life they want to live.

I can accept that other people would choose to change, and their reasons are their own. I have no right to force them to accept a body that they hate, for the same reason no one should force me to accept a body that I hate. The Deaf community has had years and years to debate the ethics of cochlear implants, and their impact on their community’s cultural values. I’m not Deaf, just a little HoH, but I try to pay attention to what they’re talking about for reasons like this.

But as a trans person, I can accept that my body isn’t ideal. There are things I would happily change, for the sake of personal comfort. But having put a great deal of thought into it, I would be much happier to live in a society that understood and respected how I perceive myself, and how I want to be perceived. It would render the desire for those aesthetic changes a point of preference, rather than emotional necessity. An accepting culture has been better for my dysphoria than an acceptable body.

It is a complicated philosophical question. I think the right answer is that people should have the freedom to make that choice, and it shouldn’t be mandatory, dangerous, or open a path to exploitation.

No, because then it’d be like in the Genetic Opera where we don’t own the parts we need to keep us alive. We’d have to pay those too, in absurd amounts. And if we don’t, we’ll just die. It’s already looking like that anyways with the “Pay or Die” system we have in healthcare.

My brain immediately went to cybernetic titties and I got lost thinking about what they might do.

Yes. I’m chronically ill with a lot of issues. I’d go down to Maelstrom’s territory at night alone and wiggle seductively. “Oh no, please don’t force chrome on me Mr. Maelstrom guy.”

Realistically, I have ADHD so having a neural interface to make sure I didn’t forget shit would be so helpful. I wouldn’t trust most devices though. It’d have to be free of the possibility of being enshittified, so I’d only be comfortable with it if I controlled the software.

I get a kind of chafe, like that of clothes that don’t fit, for the normal function of my own body. Like some other arm I’ve never used is tied behind my back. So yes, but the cost matters more.

If I die younger for it, not worth it. If I give up my sovereignty to an amoral entity for it, not worth it.

So no hack jobs and no corporate bs, but non-invasive opensource projects like openbci and openmuscle? Awesome!

For it to be more mainstream I’d really support a well ran cooperative that supports these opensource projects and customers that have them.

No way. If RoboCop or Cyberpunk is anything to go off of, trusting a company to supply parts for your own body is not a good idea.

Besides, I’ve always liked my equipment in stock form, to really appreciate it for what it is at its core.

Any mechanical only part without software. Nothing from head or spine.

Tail.

I remember a thought from CGP Grey that went along the lines of…

At some point cybernetics will be like smart phones; people look at you weird if you don’t have one.

I used to be of the purely meat/unwired crowd, but that was a younger me. Now that I’m aging, I think I’d take my chrome and never look back.

The default MO for large tech companies is they are trying to screw me out of as much money as possible with each product I buy. In this current world, you’d have to be crazy to justify implanted tech. Maybe in a different world where consumers have more power, all tech products have laws similar to car lemon laws, and where open standards dominate over proprietary tech, it could be reasonable.