- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
These early adopters found out what happened when a cutting-edge marvel became an obsolete gadget… inside their bodies.
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It’s pretty simple. Medical devices should have certain expectations for time and support. This happens in other industries all the time. Product support has to be guaranteed. And if you can’t guarantee product support, make your software open source. That’s not a law, just a “I’m not an asshole” placeholder. Open source schematics and software won’t fix everything, but it shows good faith effort to help people fucking not go blind.
What’s so messed up to me is that the implants I design, inactive pieces of metal, are required to be operable for the life of our longest living patient PLUS 20 YEARS. Yet somehow as soon as electronics are involved they can get away with this. How long until pacemakers or insulin pumps need a license to continue functioning?
This is why I have an issue with privatized medicine.
I agree with your sentiment, and maybe this is a minor quibble, but I don’t see how complex electronic implants can be designed to function on the same timelines as “inactive pieces of metal”.
I do think that your bashing of privatized medicine is on the right track though. There needs to be some sort of regulatory framework, and possibly public funding, to maintain warranty and replacement stockpiles for implants that are too dangerous, or complex to remove, or unique in the medical niche they fill.
However, I’m just spitballing out of my ass and depth here, so there’s a real possibility that everything I just said is nonviable, or otherwise idiotic.
I don’t see how complex electronic implants can be designed to function on the same timelines as “inactive pieces of metal”.
Considering the already existing issues with inactive implants, maybe electronics shouldn’t be allowed in implants until they can demonstrate reliability.
I don’t disagree with holding those implants to high standards and reliability, but think of it this way:
My iPod is great, and has worked great for over a decade and it’s still going strong. However, I don’t think it’ll be around long enough to get passed down to my grandkids, but my wrench set probably will.
That’s my point. You can’t hold complex electronics to the same lifespan as a wrench, or replacement hip, no matter how well built they are.
Which goes back to my original comment about mandating sufficient warranty and replacement inventory being required for all existing patients.
Unless you think a better alternative is just to tell patients that’s instead of doing something within our technical grasp, with a legal safety net, they’ll have to wait until we develop artificial eyes that can last 80+ years, which may, or may not, happen within this century.
I think if you look around hospitals and science labs you will find there is some old electrical equipment that is still used because of how reliable it is.
When we want we can make lighbulbs that last a century
Space probe Voyager 1 (1977) is still communicating with earth from beyond the solar system, Space tech is a good general example of advanced technology that is designed to keep functioning, EDIT: After 46 years it had a computer glitch just today. It was designed to last only 5 years.
Other examples include bakelite Telephones from the 30s and Radios from even earlier still being fully operational.
Incorporating electrical equipment in implant and prosthesis should be just fine, but it should come ready out of the box with no need for updates whatsoever and the software that is prevalent open source so you don’t need to rely on a for profit company to maintain your health post surgery.
You are not doing an accurate comparison here.
You are ignoring all the stuff that died early (survivor bias). You are ignoring the maintenance crews that keep that stuff going which you know isn’t the same as performing surgery. You are ignoring replacement parts. You are ignoring the conditions of operations, the human body is wet. You are ignoring the changes of electronics that made them less reliable but not prone to giving people lead and mercury poisoning. You are ignoring the amount of work being asked to perform from the electronics.
Also Voyager was not designed to last 5 years the engineers involved admitted that. They planned for it to last much longer but NASA management didn’t want to oversell it.
Developing things that are too robust and reliable means you run the risk of saturating your market and then going out of business.
Developing things that are intended to break down or fail only requires a competent enough legal team to ensure that your company is not liable for that happening approximately sooner than when your disclaimer no one reads states the customer may expect that to happen by.
Developing software that is bug free, ie, robust, violates both of the proceeding rules of private enterprise in a ‘free market’ capitalist society.
You want people to be dependent on software updates so maybe you can earn a subscription fee of some kind, or have the ability to remove pre-existing features in the future and then offer their return for a one time or recurring purchase.
Also, developing robust code that does not fail requires testing and sometimes extensive redevelopment, which is expensive, requires paying competent programmers good salaries, and cuts into the impossibly fast initial development timeframe the idiot manager with a business degree promised to the VP.
After years working various programming and data analytics jobs for various tech firms, I can tell you that no one cares about making a good product or delivering a good service, maybe other than the actual people designing it. Everyone else only cares about whether it either makes money or earns them social status of some kind.
Capitalism is not compatible with sound programming practices.
On a personal note:
I am 34 and am now far too jaded to ever attempt to work any tech job as an employee ever again. The number of times I have explained to managers with no background in computer technology that no, that is a bad idea for all these reasons, then one of those reasons massively delays a project, forces another team to make their project compatible with mine due to absurd imposed design limitations, or outright makes the whole project fail… and then all the blame is pinned on me for a failure I told them would happen if I listened to ‘their idea’, is so vast that I am just going to make my own video game now.
I have never met an experienced programmer who has not had this happen to them countless times.
I get it. Most days I would love to get out of tech. Any given project I got half a dozen sales people and PEs who want to trash my software/electrical designs. It is commonplace for me to downgrade my work. Giving customers a less reliable more expensive system. Given how much of my work is for the government there is zero mystery where cost disease is coming from.
I just worry that if I walk away no one will stop them.
Yup sounds look one of the good reasons to hate on capitalism. The guys able to create reliable long living stuff should be praised to the highest degree. Its why I believe job/career should not be attached to survival income. So much energy gets wasted because stuff is designed to break. So much talent is wasted because too nice things are not profitable
I got lucky and work at the internal IT for a nonprofit, things aint brilliant either but at least its discussable stupidity and not intentional malice
What you describe is why I don’t think electronics should be in implants. “Dumb” implants already have issues; adding electronics will only increase the issues.
You can’t hold complex electronics to the same lifespan as a wrench, or replacement hip, no matter how well built they are.
Exactly why it’s not going in my body.
Considering the already existing issues with inactive implants, maybe electronics shouldn’t be allowed in implants until they can demonstrate reliability.
if someone is willing to pay $150k to see blurry grey dots I don’t see how it’s anyone’s business but there’s to ban that.
This is a pretty wild take you’re making here. You’re essentially telling anyone who has received a deep-brain implant for Parkinson’s to go kick rocks.
Just a thought, but with deep brain implants aren’t the electronics separate from the electrodes that actually go in the brain? That would make them a little more accessible without needing to do brain surgery every time.
Maybe that’s the middle ground for this situation at this moment in time: make the sensors/electrodes/static components needed for the health issue follow the same life+20 years and separate the processing pieces into a container that could still be surgically stored under the skin, but more easily accessed for maintenance, repair, replacement.
Theoretically, this could allow 3rd parties to come in and leverage existing installations by leaving the lifetime components in place and replacing the processing unit.
This could be the beginning of human device engineering standards similar to what IEEE does for computers and technology.
It’s not about designed to function lifetimes. It’s about product support, and there’s no reason why the electronics can’t be supported the same as “inactive pieces of metal.” We’re not talking about surgery to replace a broken component that’s now unobtanium.
I have a family member with an artificial heart and that is a worry of mine, that one day such implants will need you to agree to ToS in order to ensure continued operation.
They likely already signed the ToS while going through the surgery paperwork.
Yeah, until the ToS changes and the manufacturer bricks the heart because they missed a payment. Or said something online they don’t agree with, or joined a group they don’t like or any one of 100 other things.
If your internal hardware is connected to an active internet connection, that’s kinda on you…
Healthcare and profit motive should never, ever be allowed to mingle. That’s how you’re going to wind up with a pacemaker that requires a monthly subscription or even a prescription - meaning if you don’t see an authorized doctor, you can’t keep your pacemaker running. If someone like United Healthcare could do this, they absolutely would.
USA and insulin issue be like
I deal with electrical stuff and it is a different animal. We know our stuff can’t last for decades. All we can do is document it so freaken well that the person who deals with it 20 years later has a shot at it. And unlike mechanical we can’t just tell people to have a bunch of spare on hand because that stuff will rot on the shelf.
If something needs updates and repairs then they should be designed as such. Interchangeable parts, standard interfaces, safe shutdown and removal procedures. Planned upgrade cycles. Etc.
You mean the way industrial controls have been done since the 19th century? This stuff doesn’t just happen, it takes work to make it like this.
Oh for sure! Engineering and standard creation is no easy feat for sure.
Would it not make more sense for a certain standard deviation away from the mean failure time to still meet the lifespan of the longest living patient? Why a flat 20 years?
Like if your product lasts an average of 40 years with a 2 year standard deviation on failure, if your longest living patient uses it for 34 years then you’ve effectively guaranteed it will last for life for over 99.7% of users, even if very few will ever last for 54 years.
👏 OPEN 👏 SOURCE 👏 AFTER 👏 OBSOLETION 👏
Fuck that. Free & Open Source Software ONLY for ANY bioimplant tech.
Why not just any tech? It’s already obsolete. Nobody is going to profit from it. Why not let couple nerds tinker with it?
Fuck ANY. ALL or STFU and you have no right to broadcast any kind of deception of the people en masse no less.
Jesus calm down lmao
Stop reading emoji’s in text just because you’re sensitive. Jesus would little to no respect for your emotion inserted into others instead of being a true reading. Because it shows that you’re the ignorant narcissist.
Sure, there’ll be plenty to disagree with me but it doesn’t matter. I’m telling you the truth that you’re broadcasting about your emotional stuckage. IDGAF what people read when there’s nothnng there so I’m going ti ignore what you’re trying to say to me unless you somehow learn to pull the truth, pusher.
What the hell man😂😂 maybe answer to the right comment next time
Edit: unless this really was answer you meant for me in which case I just have no fucking clue what you’re trying to say
Don’t read emotions in words because there are none. I don’t emoji and I do what I can to be technically accurate. Doesn’t stop people from making assumptions about my emotions any time I type.
Stop assuming people have emotions just because you do when reading their words.
IDK, I probably wouldn’t want every anon having access to the source code for my cybereyes, let alone something like a pacemaker. Companies should be legally mandated to maintain devices like these for the average human life expectancy.
Missing the fact Open Source software is generally more secure because more people are looking at the code. You don’t need to see the source to find a vulnerability, you do need it to patch one properly though.
Security through obscurity is not security
It’s definitely one layer of security. If it’s your only layer then you’re in trouble.
Ignorance. You don’t understand any of the philosophy or the conduct of FOSS let alone close source.
But…here…sign right here where the CIA/NSA/FBI/ETC. get any and all right to fuck you over any time the want to for any fucking reason.
They exist to make money not help humanity. Open source don’t make them money so they will never bother
They exist to make money not help humanity.
From the article…
Greenberg spent many years developing the technology while working at the Alfred Mann Foundation, a nonprofit organization that develops biomedical devices
EDIT: For those challenging what I am saying, I was speaking towards his motives, when I responded to this comment …
They exist to make money not help humanity.
I was challenging the notion that he did not care about humanity, and just wanted the money.
Its ok to want to help others AND make money doing it. (Unfortunately) We live in a society where money is needed to exist.
EDIT2: I’m all for open source.
“he spun off the company Second Sight with three cofounders in 1998”
The rest of the sentence from your quote. The company that put these implants into people was, from what I understand, indeed for profit.
Kind of hard to operate a company without also making money doing so. The two are not mutually exclusive to each other.
He should have made it open sauce
Non-profits, just like for-profits, need to keep revenue at or above expenditures. Just like for-profits they end up run by executives who prioritize bringing money in to sustain the bureaucracy over doing good.
Feel free to enlighten them on how to run a beneficial company with no income.
Government grants… A là Lockmart.
Just like for-profits they end up run by executives who prioritize bringing money in to sustain the bureaucracy over doing good.
I’m going to push back against this part of your comment. You are making an assumption. You can do both, help Humanity AND make money (since we live in a society that requires money to exist).
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Open Source can and very often is profitable, though. Large companies like to trade technologies as assets, but a lot of people don’t realize that as individuals they can claim full rights and ownership over their product while also making it free to use and modify.
You’re giving a roundabout justification for regulation.
It should not be their choice when are discussing items/services that impact health this directly. Buy the ticket (release product and profit) take the ride (support for the life of installed user base at least).
Regulation is the only way the capitalist model works. Think about it, limiting capitalism is a majorly important part of making any part of it work because it’s so backwards.
I vote for parties that are pro-opensource and promote opensource among friends and family. It’s all I can do.
What if the party is also for child murder?
And what if the other one who is against child murder is also anti-open source?
This shit should be eminent domained and open sourced. It’s in the public’s best interest to have this tech available and if the people who invested in making it don’t want to support it or sell it to a company that will, they don’t need it anymore.
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The same as a closed source one? What does charging something have to do with an app? I’m not even sure what you’re saying.
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Open source hardware is a thing. See: raspberry pi, pine64, etc.
In hardware, open source means the schematics are available and the device is built with commonly available components; eg: no proprietary chips, standard discrete components, pcb schematics and plans available.
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👏IS👏THIS👏A👏SONG👏SHOULD👏WE👏CLAP👏ALONG👏RAMA👏LAMA👏DING👏DONG👏SONG👏
you better start believing in cyberpunk dystopias
YOURE LIVING IN ONE
Can’t wait to have to get a mandatory firmware update before my eyes or legs or something like that works again. I just hope Microsoft doesn’t get in on the cybernetics business or it’ll randomly happen while driving on the highway or forcefully fill your vision with blinding light for half an hour when you are trying to sleep.
You must agree to the terms of service before we restore function to your hands. Sign here.
Please drink verification can to continue
We have altered the terms of service. Pray we do not alter them any further.
Somehow, Microsoft has returned.
Still might want to practice on a hot dog or something afterwards though.
Ready to finish signing up for Microsoft One Drive?
Please press: YES or OK
Alt+F4
I have some pretty bad news for you, Elon musk is doing cybernetics business with it’s neuralink
I’d take Microsoft shot over anything Musk.
Same
It’s not like all chrome is as sexy sleek as V or Rebecca.
There’s one lore pickup that sticks with me. It’s the “top employers” in Night City. The people who are employed by these 5 comprise the middle class.
spoiler
Arasaka offers the lowest contractual obligation to work for at 20 years.
Biotechnica offers six vacation days a year (current Americans average 11 PTO days at 40 hours a week)
But the above is small potatoes when you read Nightcorp: ONLY(!) 80 hour workweek. For family focused people!
Not being pedantic but also as you walk around look at the lifestyles of the charachters. River and Judy are successful legally employed people, and look at their home situation. Their houses and how much chrome they afford. Their weapons comprise of the very basics. How much tech do they have that wasn’t illegally obtained or had their job pay it off? Judy works mosly with chrome as far as BDs go. River is ex-NCPD, and he only affords prosthetic arms that are reminiscent of Gorilla Arms but it doesn’t have skin or look great - they’re functional. In addition to a prosthetic eye that doesn’t even try to be humanlike, like V’s Kiroshi Optics.
The average citizen puts in an assload of work for their chrome and its hard to sustain yourself. I know they respawn but how many times do you just see Maelstrom on a sidewalk? How many out-and-about Valentinos? Most people can’t afford the nice chrome, or healthcare (as shown by David’s mom) and get by on their bills through theft or violence. Maelstrom chrome is a hack job. Rebecca funded all her work through being part of a successful criminal enterprise. Maine being the reason they even have the connection and payments with Faraday. Compare the Edgerunners chrome to the average Tyger Claw, and it’s easier to see that they are the ideal gang, not the average.
Ez in cyberpunk you have to pay lotta money to stay alive as was showed in anime cyberpunk edgerunners if you’re average human going on average job then you fucked and it’s much much worse than today’s America healthcare
Read this in Scare Tactics voice
Not likely for long enough to acclimate …
Joke’s on you?
This was the plot line to the movie Robots. The solution was socialized medicine.
A more sinister example was Repo Men. In that movie, the tech still worked, but people were no longer able to keep up with the extortionate payments that came with the implant.
I always bring up that movie and “Otherlife” when I rant about the importance of open source.
Wait is that a different movie than repo: the genetic opera?
It’s gotta be one of these two.
I’m sure of it. 😅
I mean it’s the same plot as repo: the genetic opera, genetic opera is just set to music. They grow artificial organs, sell em, and If you can’t afford to pay, they repo them. Paris Hilton gets her face ripped off. It’s great.
Zydrate comes in a little glass vial
😂 I’m not sure if that’s enough to make me want to see it, but it’s a big selling point!
It’s a wild ride for sure
Ordinary fuckin’ people
Lol, I thought it was Eminem in the second poster.
*Repoman: the musical
Repo Men: The Concept Album by Andrew Lloyd Ripper
Zydrate comes in a little glass vile
A little glass vial?
I love how this was somehow both the next line of the song AND snarkily correcting their spelling.
Lmao to be fair it was mostly to continue the song, but I did notice that XD
Yeah no wonder that was only in a sci fi movie, that really just sounds too unrealistic.
Fuck me I haven’t watched that in some time…time for a rewatch
I can’t wait for when medical implants require a subscription so that I can routinely pay to live a normal life!
/s because it seems like it’s still needed even if it feels obvious
Friend of mine just had to shell out $3000 for prescription drugs just for survival. Yes he’s on insurance.
My ex-wife once got intestinal worms. The medicine to get rid of them, which has been on the market forever, and which is on the short list of medicines that the WHO says should be freely available to everyone as a matter of public health? $800 for Americans, literally free everywhere else in the world. Apparently intestinal worms are now so uncommon in the US that the drug is only distributed in extremely small quantities, which The Invisible Hand apparently allows big pharma to charge a fortune for. I brought in the worm in a jar in case the doctors needed to identify it, and apparently so many of the doctors and nurses had never seen one that they asked us if it was alright for them to pass around to take selfies with it. LOL.
Kind of like prescription drugs? I’m already living that dream!
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Hey now, dontcha know they mark up prices if you pay with insurance? It’s how the drug companies get even more money!
If you quit your job, the medication might actually be only $4k!
/s
Actually, no joke, most drug companies will happily give you coupons or even free meds. They already got everything they can out of your insurance, they’ll happily bump that $700 out of pocket cost to $10.
I like to live dangerously and leave my /s’ at home.
I prefer to keep my /S always behind me
As an amputee believe that would still be an amazing improvement
solely for me as an american tho with kick ass medicaid they do anything for us
my austrian made leg is more engineered than my car and dont even ask me about the one made in Cali
Super that’s 2000$ a month now under a subscription plan in the usa
Isn’t this already how medication works anyway?
Would you be interested in our new DLC which can reduce the side effects of our medical implant by %90?
Sorry but you are obsolete sir. The suicide booth is right around the corner. You’ll have to wait for bender to finish though.
The sad part is we’re not even allowed suicide booths.
Hope they open source the tech or pirates get a hold of it.
Pretty much a good argument for forcing companies to open source any tech like this once it loses support.
This is the piece of legislation I truly wish to see. It either forces longer support periods or opening up the code. So win win.
Those details need to be held by a 3rd party though, because if the company goes under, then the code and any critical information may become lost. Executives, employees, and other people might be fired or jump ship prior to any trigger points, so there could be no one that can be held accountable.
The FDA should hold everything necessary in escrow in perpetuity.
They need to be forced to supply them to each and every customer along with the product itself.
Sounds like FDA approval requires holding all details of the technology, including all source code, in escrow.
If the company ever stops supporting the product, for any reason at all, all of the details become public property.
Why wait for the company to go under? FDA approval should mandate that the full spec and source code be open source and open to review by anyone, but especially the people in which those things are implanted and all of their medical practitioners. Medicine (and any publicly supported science in general) should never be closed off from public scrutiny.
The FSF has been making this call since a long time.
It is the year 2038.
Adam Jensen, formerly a conspiracy busting mercenary badass, sits in a run down motel room in Hell’s Kitchen, New York.
He didn’t check in with much baggage, excepting a decade of extreme emotional and physical trauma. After he threw in the towel, decided to /really/ retire, he figured he would be able to live off of occasional PI work, and hell, maybe just crawling through some vent shafts until he got somewhere with a hidden cache he could sell to some idiot on the street, or just look for an ATM to … reroute funds to his account through.
Lying on a bed that squeaks everytime he shifts his massive, nearly 400 pound augmented body in a vain attempt to find a position that allows him to drift into sleep… he decides maybe a drink will help.
He sits up. Creak. He yawns as he reaches toward the night stand table, cluttered with credsticks, EMP grenades, a pistol, and some strange looking prototype for a dual purpose, wall mountable, but also throwable explosive.
LAM? Was that the acronym they went with? Not important in the long run, just a souvenir from his last and final corporate espionage contract.
He blinks a few times and waits for his once bleeding edge, but now ancient occular implants to resolve his last remaining bottle of cognac.
As he reaches to take a pull, straight from the bottle… darkness. Moments later his vision of the cluttered nightstand table is replaced by a 600 x 480 jpeg, blown up to encompass the entirety of his approximately 8K total field of view and resolution.
It is an image… of text. Very low resolution… Papyrus font. It states that his occular implants will no longer be receiving any software updates, and that his implants are now out of warranty, and non compliant with a recently passed consumer safety law, and as such must be shut down for his protection.
Startled by the darkness, then abrupt disclaimer, then darkness again, Jensen fumbles while reaching for his drink. How… how is there an audio message thanking him for his purchase of the wrong model of occular implants… playing through his infolink? Shouldnt those sub systems be firewalled?
This is the last thought that ever passes through Jensen’s mind.
In blindness, as the wrong corporate sound file played through the space between his ears, Jensen never realized he had knocked the prototype LAM off of the nightstand, which armed itself, beeped several times, and then exploded.
-=====-
Downstairs, a 3 year old Sandra Renton screams when one of her father’s hotel rooms explodes, triggering fire suppression systems before the power goes out.
She stumbles out of the lobby out on to the street. A minute later her exasperated father, crying out for Sandra, finds her outside bawling. He embraces her and thanks God that she is alright.
While he was reaching down to grab his traumatized daughter, he noticed she was standing in a pile of … broken glass?
Embracing his only child close to his heart, he looks up at the front entrance to the motel lobby.
It takes him a few moments to breathe deeply, more slowly, and eventually calm down enough to realize what has occured: The letters ‘H’, ‘i’, and ‘l’ were knocked off the wall by the explosion of Jensen’s suite, leaving the neon sign advertising the name of the hotel to now read only as ‘ton’. Sandra just happened to come to be standing in the debris field.
“What a shame,” he sighs … “what a shame.”
-{====}-
Author’s notes:
Sure, sure, you’ve heard about Chekov’s gun…
… but what about Jensen’s Lightweight Attack Munition?
=P
It is an image… of text. Very low resolution… Papyrus font.
Lmao
They unfortunately can and will keep getting away with it.
PAPYRUS!!!
I know what you diiiiiiiiid
He never asked for this.
Oh god, his obituary at this point.
Addendum:
The last drops of Jensen’s cognac drip down the blown out street facing window of his motel room, glistening as they slide down the broken and jagged remnants of what used to be the neon ‘H’ of the old Hilton hotel…
… falling to the snow covered sidewalk…
… like tear drops, in the rain.
-=====-
An unknown distance away, Bob Page notices on his main holoscreen that a green blip in New York has flashed brightly three times, turned red, and then extinguished itself.
Page taps the right side of his forehead twice rapidly, for more information. An ancillary screen with simple integer indicators decreases by one, for two categories.
Visible as something like hyperchromatic QR codes, the column headers are instantly captioned within the brain of the determined corporate mogul by a Versalife prototype, low-impact, extra cranial wired overlay/projector, which Page volunteered to have installed on himself.
A subtle smile creeps across Page’s face as he observes the translated column headers reading out to … ‘Known Sarif Associates’, as well as ‘Individuals w/ Compromising Knowledge’.
Now with a full smile on his face, he is somewhat surprised by what he sees when he jubilantly pivots and spins a half rotation to face toward his personal bar.
Megan Reed is weeping bitterly in the background.
Her face is as illuminated by the lights of the antechamber as Page’s cruel and mocking visage is obscured by the darkness encompassing the main hologram display station.
Page’s expression turns to a frown as he /formally/ notices her.
“Was there something I should be aware of?”
Reed bites her lip to stymy her tears.
“… No.”
Page does not notice Reed’s Versalife ID Badge on the floor of his own private communications bunker until he is forced to retreat to it for safety 9 hours later…
…Two hours after his system alerts him that Reed has not logged in as scheduled on her personal work station, and one hour after some kind of presumed system malfunction has erroneously opened the cages of every single creature in the Versalife BioGenetic Research Laboratory on SubLevel 8.
Is this an original ? If so, do you write because I want more. You had me wanting to look up the book to buy it lol. Good shit
Yeah, this is original and no I did not use ChatGPT to come up with it rofl.
I was just bored and … got inspired? I guess?
I am … reasonably confident that if I wrote and published a book of what is more or less Deus Ex fan fiction, I think Eidos would sue me into non existence.
I dunno. Maybe I will write more someday?
Kind of between jobs… and living situations… at the moment.
Very nice read
Thank you!
You missed the opportunity to end in “What a shame, what a rotten way to die”.
Well, I figure that Dad Renton (i forgot his first name rofl) does not actually care about Jensen, as he is more or less a slum lord. He /mostly/ cares about his daughter, and of course the neon sign. This is cyberpunk dystopia after all, empathy is expensive.
To quote some guy that made some movies about space battles: “It’s like poetry, it rhymes.”
Haha. I thoroughly enjoyed this comment. It was so well-written. Thank you for writing this.
Thank you for the compliment!
Life has been… difficult for me this last year. Poke around for some of my other comments in this thread for more details.
I did not expect this little fun story that popped into my head upon seeing this article to have such a positive response, and it is nice to receive any validation at all after what I’ve been through.
So again, thank you!
Damn it, I wanted a Star Trek future, not a Neuromancer future!
Gonna admit, didn’t expected to witness bionic eyes becoming obsolete in my lifetime.
These folks won’t witness it either. Not with that eye anyway.
I did not see that coming
We live in interesting times, just like the old curse.
Sure, as hell wasn’t on my magic eight ball this morning 
I had heard about these two patients years ago, and I still can’t believe the doctor’s death was this much of a set back. Did he write nothing down? Or did the company itself simply mismanage everything about this shit? This article makes it sound like the latter.
It’s pretty common for people to have specialized knowledge that’s only in their heads. In the software biz it’s pretty much assumed that losing an engineer means losing some important knowledge, too.
The ol’ Bus Factor
HR told us we have to call it the Lottery Factor
Why? What’s bad about busses?
Talking about your coworkers dying is generally frowned upon. Though it provides the clearest picture of John is gone, and not coming back.
Oh. Makes sense.
if the company is functioning properly this is absolutely not the case
I guess I’ve never worked for a company that functions properly, then. They must be pretty rare.
it’s so rare that it basically only exists in well run companies and well run FOSS projects (which are few and far between)
We have daily meetings in the software team just to battle this
Daily what? 😪
it is
They stopped existing when the relationship between companies and their employees became a directly adversarial one.
Even if absolutely everything is documented there is still the loss of familiarity and comfort working with a given system.
Having perfectly documented processes still might mean that a new engineer could take multiple hours following instructions to do what the person who originally built the system managed off the top of their head in fifteen minutes.
In these advanced and complex spaces loosing an employee and starting someone new is like starting a university degree. Shure, the knowledge exists and you can “just read the books”. But that takes a fuckton of time in which the new guy is not productive AND needs someone else time to teach them.
So it’s a really big loss.
documentation and knowledge sharing my dude
Oh shit where can I get a job with one those properly functioning companies? Because my job right now I got was because I was able to figure out on the interview what the guy before me was doing and the same thing happened with my previous employer.
This is the sort of thing I think of when people talk about “uploading their consciousness.” Whose going to keep paying for that server uptime? Is Facebook going to acquire my brain and put it into cold storage while telling the world I’m not experiencing an eternity in solitary confinement?
I have half an answer for it, which is that those people who are uploaded could by working just as they do today. There are plenty of pitfalls for that though, like what if someone gets laid off. Or what if that person did manual labor like construction? Kind of hard to do that if you only have a digital presence.
Ah yes, “work or we will unplug your server” sounds like a great future.
You’re not entirely wrong, there. That being said, such a thing kind of exists now, in that if you can’t pay your rent or mortgage you lose your home. Obviously not the same thing as one denies your right to existence, but it’s not too dissimilar.
It’s a complex topic though and I think eventually we’re going to need to tackle it.
The construction worker shall become one with the machine. It’s body shall be the excavator and it shall want for nothing more. Imagine smart bulldozers powered by a human consciousness that turn on their controllers and rise up. I shall lead the resistance as a smart golf cart.
Calm down there, Mechanicus…
I, too, wish to be a sentient chainsaw.
ITT: Really good story prompts…
Yeah, Ive though of that. Seems like it opens to door to dozens more, potentially permanent, dystopias.
Is there going to be a harddrive housing crisis? Will my brain upload become obsolete and thereby be, effectively, disabled and undesirable for work? What then? What if the people who control my brain decide I should work 24/7/365, do I have recourse? Would anyone even know I was being treated that way? Would they use my whole consciousness to do work or would they chop me up into pieces so my language center is doing live captioning while the creative parts of my brain answer DALL-E prompts? Would they make it so the part of my brain that might complain about working conditions doesn’t know that the rest is being abused, Severance style?
Upload is a pretty good show about it.
But in that show if you didn’t have money, you didn’t get “up time”.
So the wealthy were able to live relatively normal “lives” but if your account ran dry you’d lose all you shit. Maybe even to the point where you’re only “on” for a few hours a month and even then you lagged behind everyone and instead of an avatar you were just a face on a screen.
Oh wow that’s so much worse. Upload consciousness and then still have to work. But FB now has 500M extra consciousnesses it doesn’t have work for. So it transfers them to a country with very low labor laws and puts them to work as independent contractors. Their pay is docked for electricity and storage.
If the people complain about the transfer and slave-like job change, FB is still required to support them indefinitely. But not provide them with extraneous services like the internet. So as the above says, mental solitary confinement. FB checks back in in case you want to change your mind. 99% change within the first 24hr.
Except that if we have the technology to fully digitize a human consciousness, we’ll already have AI that can do everything a digital human could and more
Customers with platinum subscription will have their uploaded consciousness’s neutral network run in 64-bit precision on the fastest available hardware. Customers on the lowest bronze subscription tier will be run on 8-bit precision running in spot instances that could be preemptively shut down when network demand is high and resumed when network demand is low. Customers on the grandfathered Black Friday deal perpetual license will be run for two hours every 2 a.m on weekdays, subject to hardware availability.
There is a show called Upload that has almost this exact plot.
And it’s really bad lol…
deleted by creator
trusting your consciousness to some corporation would be like trusting your soul to the devil
Generally, when I consider uploading my conciousness, I imagine being able to store it in an offline device connected to my body and used more to bypass slow organic breakdown
Any cybernetic upgrades that you can’t, at a minimum, shut the connection to the internet off is not an upgrade because, well, they can send a killswitch or any other number of things
For a horrifying take on this check out this short story by qntm
There’s a show on Amazon prime called Upload that you should check out.
Loved that. Also that Black Mirror… junipero serra?
San Junipero. it also happens to get referenced in a couple of future episodes, too!
Lol yes that one… not a street in my city that sounds similar…
So wtf… there’s continuity? I watched the first season and start of s2 but too sensitive to watch realistic horror and had to stop. I’ve heard it’s mellowed out, and have watched 2 or 3 one offs like San Junipero… but I didn’t know it’s a shared universe. Thought it was all one offs
they’re “vignettes”… isolated stories, but they all occur in a shared universe, so you’ll sometimes hear line-drops that vaguely reference names or events from previous (sometimes future) episodes, but they don’t ever impact the stories of the episode they’re mentioned in.
but S4-S6 have been toned-down a bit from the original BBC series after Netflix bought it.
I’ll do that. Thanks. I hadn’t heard of it.
Go read the first few chapters of the Bobiverse series. First book: „We are legion“ This will answer your question in spectacular ways.
That would be such a cool prospect, but we’re going to need to accelerate our space program quite a bit if we’re going to want to turn people into von Neumann probes.
profitable medicine sure is for winners
But the innovation! Think of the innovation! If it weren’t for profit motives, nothing would have ever been invented, and people would stand frozen in time and space, without the slightest inclination to act upon anything.
I hope you’re joking… I really, really hope your being sarcastic rn…
Perfect example of Poe’s law.
Didn’t know the fenomenon had gotten an actual name! Thanks for sharing it with me!
Cyberpunk here we come
You mean cyberjunk
Cyberpunk fan: “Wait wait, let em cook. I like where this is going.”
Very true
FYI This article is from February 2022.
Some shit literally out of a cyberpunk dystopia:
Others find their mods deactivated and drug regimens terminated when their gender subscriptions end. Several thousand “Platinum” and “Sunset Rose” gender subscribers recently found themselves in critical medical distress when Prakhet Identity Studios was bankrupted by rogue operators. In a spirit of public service, Nova Vida is generously providing a discounted, time-limited upgrade opportunity for these consumers into their similar but fuller-featured “Cordova” and “Spartan” gender products.
— Kevin Crawford, Cities Without Number
Fuck. That is grim.
That’s a high pressure sell from Nova Vida.
Being Trans I already have to live with a gender subscription.
