What If We Became Cyborgs?

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Want to control things with your mind? Have you ever wanted to hear colors? Or what about live forever?

Well, if you were a cyborg, all of this would be possible! How would being part machine affect us?

What kind of enhancements would you get? And is this the next step in human evolution?

Wait, to call this a WHAT IF is a bit misleading. It’s more of a when if, at least that’s what scientific experts like Elon Musk think.

Artificial intelligence is becoming more advanced by the day. Within the next 50 years, AI will be replacing most of our jobs. They’ll simply be better at them than we are.

Musk thinks that for humans to avoid being reduced to the usefulness of a housecat, we’ll need to augment ourselves so we can compete with robots. Now, what’s going to happen when we go through with this human augmentation?

If you choose to become a cyborg the first decision you’ll need to make is what kind of changes you want to make to your body. Do you want cybernetic eyes that allow you to see in black and white or sepia?

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What about a chip in your hand that starts your car for you? Or, if you want to get crazy, you could change your entire bone structure to be carbon fiber. The possibilities are practically endless!

Human augmentation will simply allow us to be better at almost anything that we do now. Both physically and mentally.

Imagine having mechanical arms. You’d be shooting three-pointers more consistently than Steph Curry, you’d have a harder punch than Mike Tyson and a faster serve than Serena Williams. That’s because your arms will be programmed to be more consistent and just overall better than human arms could ever be. With two bionic arms, you’d be one of the greatest athletes to ever live.

Although, if everyone had these arms, sports might be more boring, but don’t forget these arms can be used for a number of things. Most importantly, it may help us outwork robots in factories and other lines of work.

As for living forever, it might be possible if you decide to become a cyborg. That’s because if you have a body part that’s failing, you could simply replace it with a mechanical one. And after it fails, you could replace it again, you might jsut live forever.

But at this point you may barely be human. The only organic part of you that might remain could be your mind. Is it too late to go back?

Unfortunately, it is. Once you do become a cyborg, there isn’t really any turning back, even if you don’t get any invasive surgery. Let’s say you get an ear enhancement that allows you to hear as well as a bat; if it somehow got damaged or fell out of your ear, you wouldn’t be able to hear at all. Why? Because your brain would have adapted to hearing with your enhancement. Once it’s gone, you wouldn’t know how to hear without it.

Oh, and don’t forget about the chance of your body parts being hacked, and then losing control of them. Not only that, but who will be able to get these enhancements? As of now, it’s only for the rich. If you wanted to get a cybernetic enhancement today, it would cost you well into six-figures.

This means there could be a potential class divide once humanity does decide to become cyborgs. People who are wealthy will be more advanced cyborgs than those who can’t afford it.

But there’s always the chance that enhancements become cheaper as time goes on. So if there was a divide, it may not last for long.

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After we make all these changes to ourselves what’s next? Will we leave our bodies and have our thoughts uploaded into the cloud?

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