Jackal Flapnasty hits the nail on the head - the established tech in this sphere is for people with disabilities. Oscar Pistorius' blade legs were better suited for competitive running than my 'stock' ones, and that's pretty cool to me in a way a magnet implant just isn't.
chai tea latte, June 05, 2018, 10:08:56 am
Are there any of these idiots who want to actually sever a limb to get something better replaced?
Was the lady who wanted to be a real DBE amputee who wears twin body-powered prostheses with matching Dorrance #5X stainless steel hooks, a biohacker?
poooo566, June 11, 2018, 03:55:33 pm
Yes to both. It's something quite a few people in this sphere dream about, but they all explain away not having done it by saying "the technology isn't there yet", with almost no lip service to the issues faced by amputees and the disabled in society. It's a kind of dumb selfish techno-utopianism with little grounding in the real world imo.
The biohack that I think is most interesting of the ones straddling the line between dumb star trek shit and dumb tech bro shit is Scottish biohacker Lepht Anonym's
Southpaw implant, a device that is installed behind the knee and which uses haptic feedback to create an innate sense of magnetic North, like carrier pigeons have. Users report getting lost less frequently, but I don't think that's worth installing a PCB into the space opposite my kneecap, especially since there's also a version that you can wear as an ankle bracelet, no DIY surgery required, which I also think is dumb.