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Post by jjpor on Oct 20, 2009 20:53:22 GMT
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Post by timeywimeyding on Oct 23, 2009 12:51:03 GMT
Meh, it's a long way off some mad scientist giving everyone earpods, mindcontrolling them and sending them to Battersea power station.
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lostspook
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Post by lostspook on Oct 23, 2009 18:33:51 GMT
Heh, yes, but they were artificial, and these are talking about transplants, but still Kit Pedler o-o etc.
And timey-wimey - the New Who Cybermen are AU versions; jj is referring to 'our' universe, old-style Cybermen, who indeed literally started as Spare Parts. ;D
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evelyn
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Post by evelyn on Oct 23, 2009 18:38:01 GMT
And whiffle balls. Do not forget their cunning whiffle ball/vaccuum tubing ensembles.
At least the classic cyberman does not enslave humanity via Bluetooth! XD
(Can you imagine getting some of these theoretical 50-year-old cyberpeople through an airport? Scary thought.)
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Post by primsong on Oct 23, 2009 21:34:06 GMT
The whiffle-balls were my favorite part, I keep hoping they'll reincorporate whiffle-balls into the new ones somehow, it would make a great homage. :-D
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Post by magnusgreel on Oct 24, 2009 9:45:48 GMT
Japanese science-fiction talks about this all the time. They basically take for granted that we'll all have replacement parts available in the next 30 or 40 years. I thought that was insanely optimistic, but maybe I was wrong. We should stop and ask ourselves all sorts of questions about the implications of all this, but we should see the obvious good to be had from it all too.
Our planet isn't drifting off into interstellar space like Mondas was, so it's not quite going to be the way it was with the (our) Cybermen... We aren't going to feel we have to become near-total machines to survive. My concern is that only rich people will get the replacements.
I felt like giving a serious answer to this one.
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lostspook
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Post by lostspook on Oct 24, 2009 10:33:39 GMT
And whiffle balls. Do not forget their cunning whiffle ball/vaccuum tubing ensembles. (Can you imagine getting some of these theoretical 50-year-old cyberpeople through an airport? Scary thought.) Hah, yes, I'm sorry I forgot to mention that. Plus, :lol:, yes, that could be difficult. And, Magnus, yes, a very good point. Isn't that always the way? And the Cybermen in their original form ask us if you keep replacing bits of yourself, how far do you go before you're not you anymore? How much is mere survival worth? I don't wish to diss new Cybermen, but I don't quite think they make the same point. Because taking your brain out of your head and plonking in a walking computer just lacks the same process of gradual downfall. (Although, I suppose it starts with an implant, true.) |
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Post by magnusgreel on Oct 24, 2009 14:00:08 GMT
And the Cybermen in their original form ask us if you keep replacing bits of yourself, how far do you go before you're not you anymore? How much is mere survival worth? I don't wish to diss new Cybermen, but I don't quite think they make the same point. Because taking your brain out of your head and plonking in a walking computer just lacks the same process of gradual downfall. (Although, I suppose it starts with an implant, true.) Excellent point. Japanese SF deals with this, especially the "Ghost in the Shell" TV series, which I now have thanks to a friend who's educating me on all this. I think that cybernetic parts plus cloning are going to be where many or most medical advances will take place. We won't have much choice except to develop in that direction, it will help a lot of people, but it will lead to some disturbing questions too. I may be repeating myself. It's late/early. |
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Post by timeywimeyding on Oct 26, 2009 12:21:17 GMT
Heh, yes, but they were artificial, and these are talking about transplants, but still Kit Pedler o-o etc. And timey-wimey - the New Who Cybermen are AU versions; jj is referring to 'our' universe, old-style Cybermen, who indeed literally started as Spare Parts. ;D Oops. Sorry. Blame me and my misunderstandings. |
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lostspook
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Post by lostspook on Oct 26, 2009 20:59:00 GMT
Oops. Sorry. Blame me and my misunderstandings. Perfectly understandable if the Cyber-race, in addition to their already convoluted and contradictory history, go and have two separate origins as well. ;D |
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Post by jjpor on Oct 26, 2009 21:34:24 GMT
Yeah, having two origin stories is a bit of an interesting thing if you think about it. I wonder why they decided to do it as an Alternate Universe thing instead of just using the "original" Cybermen the same way they just carried the likes of the Daleks and the Master over from the original series (and we know the "original" Cybermen exist in NuWho, because one of their heads was in Van Statten's museum in "Dalek").
I guess because they wanted to do an alternate history story with alt-Pete and alt-Jackie in it (and zeppelins, because in AU there are always zeppelins, despite the fact that in real life they were hopelessly outcompeted by aeroplanes, not to mention the atrocious safety record - it's the rules!), and also wanted to do a Cyberman story and ended up just combining the two for some reason.
I think you make an excellent point there, Magnus; all of this gee-whizz science and technology stuff is mighty expensive, and in a free market economy such as our own, it's hard to imagine even the likes of the Krazy Kommie NHS (satire, folks!) cyborging people for free. Which leads to images of a technologically-immortal social and economic elite lording it over the proles for ever and ever...brrr...
But yes, the dehumanising effects of technology and self-modification are a strong theme in science fiction, and not just Japanese science fiction, although they do seem to have a special take on it all. And that's what Kit Pedler was really thinking of, I guess, when he had the idea for the Cybermen. Is survival at any cost really worth it? Is it worth surviving if you are, effectively, no longer human.
And this takes us on to all sorts of stuff like transhumanism and the Singularity and all of that - the idea that within our own lifetimes, technological Western society (and the people who live in it) will evolve in ways we can't even imagine now. I take all of that stuff with a hefty dose of salt (people are people, right?), but it's interesting stuff and a huge topic once you start getting into it.
And whiffle balls are the wave of the future...
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Post by magnusgreel on Oct 27, 2009 21:39:07 GMT
Science fiction, real science fiction, asks those kinds of vital questions, but rarely do they deal with the economics of technological change. Instead, writers tend to buy into a vague, pervasive world-view that assumes that whatever changes come along, we'll all have access to them. That's a very "suburban" attitude.
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Post by jjpor on Oct 27, 2009 23:11:08 GMT
I agree completely; if you just look at the large proportion of the world's population who don't have access to the technology we have even now; I don't see anything that makes me think this state of affairs will change in the foreseeable future. So, even when the elite are all immortal genetically-modified, computer-augmented nanotech cyborgs living in space with their AI friends, 99% of everybody else will still be "baselines" living and dying as people have always lived, and denied the benefits mainly for, I suspect, economic reasons. Unless the elite decide to wipe them out and build nature reserves in the places they used to live or something equally horrifying...
But yes, it's the side of it that the gurus of these new technologies fail to take into account, or at any rate don't want to own up to.
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Post by magnusgreel on Oct 28, 2009 12:08:38 GMT
Well said jjpor. ... Unless the elite decide to wipe them out and build nature reserves in the places they used to live or something equally horrifying... That definitely belongs in an SF story! |
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Post by Maggadin on Oct 28, 2009 12:39:15 GMT
I agree completely; if you just look at the large proportion of the world's population who don't have access to the technology we have even now; I don't see anything that makes me think this state of affairs will change in the foreseeable future. So, even when the elite are all immortal genetically-modified, computer-augmented nanotech cyborgs living in space with their AI friends, 99% of everybody else will still be "baselines" living and dying as people have always lived, and denied the benefits mainly for, I suspect, economic reasons. Unless the elite decide to wipe them out and build nature reserves in the places they used to live or something equally horrifying... But yes, it's the side of it that the gurus of these new technologies fail to take into account, or at any rate don't want to own up to.  Comrade! ;D |
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lostspook
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Post by lostspook on Oct 28, 2009 19:11:25 GMT
... Unless the elite decide to wipe them out and build nature reserves in the places they used to live or something equally horrifying... That definitely belongs in an SF story! MAGNUS! Don't feed the plot bunnies! |
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Post by jjpor on Oct 28, 2009 20:52:08 GMT
Yeah, let's round up a cadre of dedicated commie sailors and storm the Winter Palace! MAGNUS! Don't feed the plot bunnies! Yeah, but it's a nice bunny, a pedigree bunny; I will nurture it and feed it only the finest iceberg lettuce until its hour has come... *has horrifying mental flashback to Patrick Troughton very creepily holding that bunny in that episode of Inspector Morse* But yes, think about it; if you're a member of the transhuman elite in some hypertech future in, say, the year 2109, you don't need a workforce or industry per se to keep you in the style to which you are accustomed. You just get some nanites to disassemble a few asteroids for you and build you whatever you please. A spaceship to live in; or maybe, if you've uploaded a copy of your personality to the super-duper future internet, you can be the spaceship! So there's no reason why Earth can't become a verdant paradise planet again. No reason at all. Well, a few billion stupid, lazy, non-technologically-augmented beings who scarcely count as people at all, but... Of course, the alternative is a truly post-scarcity society in which anyone can have access to the technology because it literally costs nothing; you can make anything from anything, so wealth becomes meaningless. Which is a very utopian way of looking at it, and I cynically distrust all utopias, but it would be nice if it worked. Iain Banks's Culture is something along these lines. And on the third hand, you have a situation in which everybody _will_ have access to the technology, whether they like it or not. Those nanites can infect anybody, almost like a virus, rebuilding their bodies and rewiring their brains until they can't imagine ever being different to the way they are now... Which maybe just about brings us back on topic? |
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Post by magnusgreel on Oct 29, 2009 5:15:10 GMT
These are all very good ideas, jjpor. Get to work on them!
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Post by jjpor on Oct 29, 2009 23:35:04 GMT
I may at that, Magnus; I may at that.
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