These early adopters found out what happened when a cutting-edge marvel became an obsolete gadget… inside their bodies.
Cyberpunk here we come
You mean cyberjunk
Cyberpunk fan: “Wait wait, let em cook. I like where this is going.”
Very true
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
Being Trans I already have to live with a gender subscription.
Fuck. That is grim.
That’s a high pressure sell from Nova Vida.
👏 OPEN 👏 SOURCE 👏 AFTER 👏 OBSOLETION 👏
They exist to make money not help humanity. Open source don’t make them money so they will never bother
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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.
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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Feel free to enlighten them on how to run a beneficial company with no income.
Government grants… A là Lockmart.
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?
👏IS👏THIS👏A👏SONG👏SHOULD👏WE👏CLAP👏ALONG👏RAMA👏LAMA👏DING👏DONG👏SONG👏
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.
How the hell would you even recharge an open source retina? This isn’t your typical PC app.
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.
I don’t know either, and I think OP didn’t read the article. What the fuck is open source limb? Open source retina? What does recharging mean in that context? Swapping the battery or faceplanting on an inductive charger?
Or perhaps OP meant manually updating your eye instead of relying on a company? But in that case, a battery swap is not even related to open/closed source topic.
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.
Now it makes sense. It would be better if people started calling it “open hardware” instead of extending open source to cover the transparency of the hardware’s design.
Open source is originally associated with software and refers to source code that is made freely available and can be modified and redistributed.
Open hardware means that the design specifications, schematics, and related information are made freely available for users to study, modify, and distribute.
Fuck that. Free & Open Source Software ONLY for ANY bioimplant tech.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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…
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trusting your consciousness to some corporation would be like trusting your soul to the devil
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.
For a horrifying take on this check out this short story by qntm
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
ITT: Really good story prompts…
I, too, wish to be a sentient chainsaw.
Calm down there, Mechanicus…
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.
Can’t wait to get in line for that Elon Misk brain chip!
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.
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.
I did not see that coming
Sure, as hell wasn’t on my magic eight ball this morning 
We live in interesting times, just like the old curse.
These folks won’t witness it either. Not with that eye anyway.
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
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Why? What’s bad about busses?
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Oh. Makes sense.
if the company is functioning properly this is absolutely not the case
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
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.
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.
I guess I’ve never worked for a company that functions properly, then. They must be pretty rare.
it is
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? 😪
They stopped existing when the relationship between companies and their employees became a directly adversarial one.
File suit under right to repair?
Second Sight’s long-term plan was always to pivot to a brain implant that would bypass the eye altogether and directly stimulate the visual cortex.
The number of blind folks who are receptive to electrical retinal stimulation was always too small for this business model. These crooks knew that and pumped investors for a non existent hope that this would somehow translate into a non existent technology. Suprise suprise, you can’t magic your way into these things.
The entire operation was always doomed to turn out this way.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
This sort of tech needs to be heavily regulated in how proprietary it can be; not at fucking all.
At a minimum, one should be able to cut off access to the internet so a company can’t EoS killswitch it/pull a Nintendo and send an EoS fuck you update that breaks any attempts to put control in the user’s hands
Mind, that’s a really fucking low bar, and would be depressing if that’s all regulation guaranteed
Yeah that bar is too low. Putting tech in someone to keep them alive or enhance their life somehow should come with some sort of permanent responsibility from somewhere. If the company goes bankrupt the expertise doesn’t just vanish, then make it a public responsibility to ensure that whoever was granted eyesight from some kind of implant, gets to keep that. Hell, make the technology and research public as well.
Bodyparts/functions should belong entirely to whomever possess them, a company going bankrupt doesn’t suddenly mean that someone should lose their ability to walk or whatever.
No company should be able to “own” someone’s bodypart, or their ability to perform a certain task or whatever. The notion is preposterous.
What did Nintendo do exactly? I know they pull off a lot of shit, but I have not heard about this
FYI This article is from February 2022.
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
Would you be interested in our new DLC which can reduce the side effects of our medical implant by %90?
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?
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.
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.
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.
*Repoman: the musical
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
Repo Men: The Concept Album by Andrew Lloyd Ripper
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. 😅
Ordinary fuckin’ people
Lol, I thought it was Eminem in the second poster.
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.
😂 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
Zydrate comes in a little glass vial
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
