Cyberpunk
"High tech, low life."
"The street finds its own uses for things."
We all know the quotes and the books. But cyberpunk is more than a neon-soaked, cybernetic aesthetic, or a gritty dystopian science fiction genre. It is a subculture composed of two fundamental ideas: PUNK, and CYBER.
The PUNK: antiauthoritarian, anticapitalist, radical freedom of expression, rejection of tradition, a DIY ethic.
The CYBER: all that, but high-fuckin'-tech, ya feel? From DIYing body mods to using bleeding edge software to subvert corporate interests. It's punk for the 22nd century.
This is a community dedicated to discussing anything cyberpunk, be it books, movies, or other art that falls into the genre, or real life tech, projects, stories, ideas or anything else that adheres to these ideals. It's a place for 'punks from all over the federated Net to hang out and swap stories and meaningful content (not just pictures of city nightscapes).
Welcome in, choom.
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If I could be in a fully ideal synthetic/robot body I would.
As for the whole brain-consciousness issue, and if I can go as fictional as I want, I'd let the equivalent of fluid nanobots very VERY slowly replace my brain cells with electronics. I'm talking 5-10 years. That way there's no real debate on if my "true" self died during the transfer to an artificial brain.
Oh, there's still a real debate, Theseus.
My answer to that philosophical quandary is very 40k in nature. I believe everything has a metaphysical spirit. The soul may or may not exist, but this spirit transcends any religious belief and isn't truly scientific in nature.
It's something that everything that has ever existed or ever will exist has. It's what makes each individual item, from each living creature to every rock, to every river unique. It isn't the composite parts of the item that does this.
Take your phone for example. It indeed does have a machine spirit. That spirit is what makes it the phone you know versus anyone else's phone. You can replace every part within it over the years but the phone remains. Your memories with it will remain and that bond you share creates maintains this spirit. No matter what it will always have this spirit and it cannot be destroyed.
Humans have this very same spirit. As long as my identity exists, as long as my ego remains. I remain me no matter how much of my flesh sack remains.
EVEN IN DEATH, I STILL SERVE