this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2025
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Worldbuilding

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As I prepare for my fifth eye surgery to fix a prosthetic lens, I'm reminded of how dumb elective cybernetic implants, augmentations, or what have you, would be in real life.

I bring this up because in most sci-fi settings I've encountered where cybernetics exist, they go unquestioned as a boon to the individual and society at large. When they are the focus of a work, people who are in favor of baseline humanity are portrayed as luddites or even bigots.

Very quickly, here's why I take a dim view of cybernetics:

  1. Society is already stratified into haves and have-nots. The people most likely to get augmented are those who are already in power, the rich and connected, not the huddled masses. So a persecution scenario like that seen in the later Deus Ex games is unrealistic.
  2. tech support. Devices eventually need to be serviced or replaced, and that's bad when it involves turning your innards into outards.
  3. Following from number 2, planned obsolescence. Your model of brain chip is outmoded? Better get the newest one if you want to keep up.
  4. Invasive medical procedures are inherently risky.
  5. Do you really want your body to be vulnerable to cyber attacks?
  6. Better pony up the dough for the gold subscription if you want to dream in color again.

In my conworld, even though the yinrih have achieved Kardashev II status they don't use cybernetics. Part of this is because they can't lose consciousness, meaning they can't use anesthesia, meaning surgeries have to be as minimally invasive as possible, limiting what sort of stuff can be implanted. The other, more realistic reason, is because wearable tech does most of what you want out of augmentations. Why chop off your legs when you can wear pseudosinew to improve strength? Why get ocular implants when HUD specs do the job? You get the point.

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[–] snooggums@piefed.world 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

In cyberpunk stories the cybernetics are generally stolen and sold on the black market by shady criminals and sold to those in the lower economic strata in stories about oppression and fighting the rigged system. They are often purposed for fighting, sex, or other things that don't have anything to do with addressing medical issues.

In other sci-fi stories they often do include the fact that they are more readily available to the wealthy instead of the masses even when beneficial if that is the economic system. In post scarcity societies like Star Trek they are presented as beneficial and generally easily accessible like Geordi's visor in TNG.

There are also stories and settings that match what you are describing, where having cybernetics is seen as a status symbol or used as something that divides society, but it isn't the majority of settings that I'm aware of. Cybernetics are used in all kinds of stories and treated as positive or negative depending on the setting and the story being told.

I do like the concept for your setting which has a lot of different negatives that could play out, but each one could also stand on its own as a single overwhelming negative and some are slightly contradictory for stories. Why would the rich favor them if they were easily hacked for example.