Intergalactic Summit

...true. The Watch paid for everything.

Well reminded, thank you.

I recommend a lover

This seems a good place to put this considering the conversation.

We here at VaskTech, an Origin based member of the Alexylva Paradox Corporation, offers some of the finest and most affordable forms of augmentation available. With numerous offices located within Origin, and beyond as well, we offer countless opportunities to make a body operating already at peak efficiency, even better. I myself use prototype augmentation designs to enhance many of my jump clones so as to offer myself the best protection available out of pod.

For those where ISK are less of a consideration, we also have some of the most efficient and useful self-defense and utility augmentations on the open market. As well as many military grade enhancements for soldiers and non-capsuleer pilots. Our state of the art and highly secured medical suites are the envy of many International organizations, and the option for inactive-clone augmentation for our capsuleer patrons offers a convenience that few can match.

Remember when the day comes that your pod and ship can't quite help you, VaskTech can.

I'm confident we can win!

I barely know anything about the situation, though, so that confidence is pretty baseless. For all I know, they could be herding people into slave camps right now.

On a more serious note re; Transhumanism, it's worth noting that despite it being semi-popular to decry it, what we consider conservative medical technology today was probably all considered a dangerous transhumanist pipe dream in the past. Organ cloning, genetic rejuvenation therapy, basic neocom implants...

Heresy gives way to acceptance gives way to orthodoxy. The people who today are scoffed at for the pretense of calling themselves "Infomorph", might soon find themselves playing the roles of Diana and Nauplius, lambasting the people merging their brains with volcanoes or something.

Speaking for myself, Ms. Ikiryo, it's not so much the tool kit that I find worrying. It's the idea that the results aren't entirely human.

That doesn't lead to good places for either side. One side concludes that inhuman beings don't deserve to be treated as humans and can be, for example, murdered freely; the other concludes that being inhuman means they don't have human duties like exercising restraint in dealing with large civilian populations.

My predecessor had a self-described habit of using FoF missiles to turn unhardened modular structures into pyrotechnic displays-- planting "seeds of fire," and watching them germinate and bloom.

I'm not very sorry that I'm not that person anymore.

Hmm.

If you don't mind me saying so, Aria, it does feel like (though for understandable reasons) your image of transhumanism as an idea is pretty singularly influenced by Capsuleers, whereas I was more talking about the concept in general terms, with some regard to Saede's project. I might've said the same thing as you, at one point, but being here a while has sort of expanded by perspective.

Let me put it this way: You're talking about a scenario that arises when there are two groups with clearly defined and massive gaps in both power and life experience that are led to exist alongside each other; Essentially, a caste system of Haves and Have Nots, where there's a collapse in empathy and common understanding as a result. This is what has happened with Capsuleers and baseliners, which you are absolutely right in saying has led to some truly dreadful events and horrifically broken people.

I would posit, however, that this is at least in part an anomaly exclusive to this one instance, because - And I've seen this firsthand here out here, to an extent - in natural circumstances, it doesn't play out that way at all. In Origin (and likely some of the more liberal and wealthy areas of highsec space) you see a bunch of people flirting with transhumanity in a range of different respects, trying out all sorts of emergent god-defiance, from radical physical changes to mental communication techniques to who-knows-what. Some of these become popular and catch on, but the environment of lots of relatively little changes, most of which are optional, makes it very hard to draw a distinct line between who is human and who isn't. I think this is how tolerance generally arises in human society, and where my optimistic side thinks things might be headed in the future - Where blurred lines and mostly-small steps make it hard to identify who is part of the outgroup at all. (It further helps that the changes which are near-ubiquitous are available very easily.)

Now, the bubble of quasi-socialism that makes this sort of techno-adventurism possible here isn't exactly a neutral environment, either. But still, this leads me to believe that what's happened with us is generally only because the unnatural intervention of the Jove led to a technological leap that was 1) Huge, 2) Narrowly defined, 3) Only available to a crushingly small group of elites.

It rarely happens that way normally. So I wouldn't be sure the problems you talk about are endemic to the very idea.

Sorry for the wall of text. I got strangely fired up there.

Well-- if you're just approaching "transhumanity" as humanity, then maybe we can dispense with that term?

I don't think the idea of transcending or crossing over from humanity into something else is a very useful one for either your purposes or mine.

Humans are a little tribal still. That's not a tendency that needs any extra encouragement, so, not only "people are people," but "people should always be understood to be people."

Even if they have some kind of interesting tools.

Rehabilitation is always a chore when using augments. When I first began augmenting my clones it took some time to get used to the increased strength and sensory overloads. Now when I switch to my "natural" primary clone I feel deaf blind and dumb.

I had a similar problem with my limb augments. Sometimes I would try and walk hurriedly and throw myself to the ground due to incorrect acceleration of the joints. My biggest problem for a while was terminals. My fingers had a habit of smashing keys until I switched to a multi-purpose data jack in the finger tips to allow neural typing.

You found old fashioned machine clocks and I used engineering and wiring. It was months before I could confidently return to practicing medicine with my own hands. Now I refuse to even perform the most minor of operations with my "natural" hands.

It is all about becoming used to something that will improve your ability to function. Maybe not immediately, it may take months for you to become accustomed to it. But once you are anything else will make you feel less then yourself.

That's because you are nothing but a pro-gallentean propagandist and liar. Please vacate the media if you fail to contribute with something except your pro-gallentean trolling, hnolku tyuui.

'Transhumanity' is a useful term because it refers to humans who have, by means of technology or eugenics or etc, transcended the human limits. Inside, they still have the human spirit, but, well, they had become something more than human.

Think about it in capsuleer terms. By all appearance, origins, thought, we are humans. However, we aren't your regular humans. Not anymore. We had become different in quite a number of ways, including the ability to cheat death on a regular basis. This 'transcending' over the limit of death is what makes us transhumans. We are, by all accounts, especially by our genetic coding, humans. It's just, well...we are also different now.

There's a good reason why the universal symbol for transhumanism is [H+].

Though there is something that has bothered me for a long while. It is understood in my culture that there are spirits in all things, from the highest mountain to the most microscopic of space dust. As such, the prosthetics too have spirits, as do every component in every machine really.

So, when they merge with each other, do the individual components still retain their spirit? Or do the spirits merge too? Or does this means that every individual and everything else are actually a conglomerate of spirits, a spirit composite, of which there is one dominant spirit that represents all the others that make up the individual? Does the spirit of the mechanical augment remain an individual, or does it join with our human spirit? Is our human spirit made out of multiple organ spirits?