Cyberbetics

Zakharra wrote:How prelevant are cybernetics? I know regrowing limbs is easily within the capability of the Honorverse for most worlds (if somewhat hard), but cybernetics is obviously a well developed industry. Especially how well Honor's eye and arm are disguised to look like a regular eye and arm. I do remember though when Honor did get her eye and arm, a mention of other worlds/societies that did take to cybernetics a lot more than the norm, even taking on obvious cybernetics. So I am wondering how common are obvious cybernetics for limb replacement?

Zakharra wrote:How prelevant are cybernetics? I know regrowing limbs is easily within the capability of the Honorverse for most worlds (if somewhat hard), but cybernetics is obviously a well developed industry. Especially how well Honor's eye and arm are disguised to look like a regular eye and arm. I do remember though when Honor did get her eye and arm, a mention of other worlds/societies that did take to cybernetics a lot more than the norm, even taking on obvious cybernetics. So I am wondering how common are obvious cybernetics for limb replacement?

SWM wrote:

Zakharra wrote:How prelevant are cybernetics? I know regrowing limbs is easily within the capability of the Honorverse for most worlds (if somewhat hard), but cybernetics is obviously a well developed industry. Especially how well Honor's eye and arm are disguised to look like a regular eye and arm. I do remember though when Honor did get her eye and arm, a mention of other worlds/societies that did take to cybernetics a lot more than the norm, even taking on obvious cybernetics. So I am wondering how common are obvious cybernetics for limb replacement?

If I recall, there is text somewhere that cybernetics are quite common in some systems. Cybernetic modification is sometimes the basis for fashion there. But I don't recall where the text is; I may be misremembering completely.

Zakharra wrote:How prelevant are cybernetics? I know regrowing limbs is easily within the capability of the Honorverse for most worlds (if somewhat hard), but cybernetics is obviously a well developed industry.

Ashes of Victory
Chapter Seventeen
wrote:Honor had learned to adjust for the fact that the artificial nerves in her face simply did not report sensory data the same way live ones did. At the moment, she felt nothing at all on her left cheek. Had her implants been working properly, however, she would have "felt" the pressure of the growing sea breeze quite differently on the two sides of her face . . . and even after so many years, the sensations from the left side would have felt artificial. Which was fair enough, since that was precisely what they would have been. She sometimes wondered if it would have been easier to adjust if they'd had to replace the nerves in both cheeks, but she had no intention of experimenting to find out.

That artificiality was the main reason so many star nations, including the Star Kingdom, had no extensive market in bio enhancement. Some nations did, of course. The rogue bio-modifiers of Mesa came to mind almost automatically, but her mother's native Beowulf had also supported a lucrative enhancement market. In one way, Honor could understand the temptation, for there had been features to the eye the Peeps had burned out that she missed sorely, like the low-light vision and telescopic and microscopic functions. But even there, what she saw had never seemed quite as alive—as "real"—as what the unenhanced vision of her right eye had reported. It was something that probably could never be fully described to anyone who hadn't experienced it directly. For that matter, she supposed it might well be purely psychological, although it was reported with near total unanimity by everyone who'd received similar implants. The closest she'd ever been able to come to defining the difference even for herself was to think of what she saw through her left eye as a very, very good, three-dimensional flat screen presentation. Again, she'd often wondered whether or not replacing both eyes, so that she no longer had the "distraction" of her natural eye's input, would have ameliorated the problem in time. And, again, she had no intention of ever finding out.

But there were people who'd made the opposite choice. Indeed, in some of humanity's far-flung cultures, like Sharpton, where the cyborg was a sort of cultural icon, it was as routine for an individual to replace limbs and eyes with artificial improvements as it was for someone on Manticore to have her teeth cleaned and straightened. Or her ears pierced, for that matter. Personally, Honor couldn't imagine doing such a thing. In fact, the very thought made her uncomfortable—probably because she'd spent so much of her life in space. After so many years in an artificial exterior environment, she felt no temptation whatsoever to turn her own body into an artificial interior environment, whatever advantages over mere flesh and blood it might have brought with it.

Weird Harold wrote:

Zakharra wrote:How prelevant are cybernetics? I know regrowing limbs is easily within the capability of the Honorverse for most worlds (if somewhat hard), but cybernetics is obviously a well developed industry.

I think you mean Cyborgs. Cybernetic has a much wider application beyond prosthetics.

For the majority of the Honorverse, lingering memories of the Final War generates a bias against Cyborgs and Genies. There are only a few places where non-medical Cyborgs are acceptable or common.

Honor had learned to adjust for the fact that the artificial nerves in her face simply did not report sensory data the same way live ones did. At the moment, she felt nothing at all on her left cheek. Had her implants been working properly, however, she would have "felt" the pressure of the growing sea breeze quite differently on the two sides of her face . . . and even after so many years, the sensations from the left side would have felt artificial. Which was fair enough, since that was precisely what they would have been. She sometimes wondered if it would have been easier to adjust if they'd had to replace the nerves in both cheeks, but she had no intention of experimenting to find out.

That artificiality was the main reason so many star nations, including the Star Kingdom, had no extensive market in bio enhancement. Some nations did, of course. The rogue bio-modifiers of Mesa came to mind almost automatically, but her mother's native Beowulf had also supported a lucrative enhancement market. In one way, Honor could understand the temptation, for there had been features to the eye the Peeps had burned out that she missed sorely, like the low-light vision and telescopic and microscopic functions. But even there, what she saw had never seemed quite as alive—as "real"—as what the unenhanced vision of her right eye had reported. It was something that probably could never be fully described to anyone who hadn't experienced it directly. For that matter, she supposed it might well be purely psychological, although it was reported with near total unanimity by everyone who'd received similar implants. The closest she'd ever been able to come to defining the difference even for herself was to think of what she saw through her left eye as a very, very good, three-dimensional flat screen presentation. Again, she'd often wondered whether or not replacing both eyes, so that she no longer had the "distraction" of her natural eye's input, would have ameliorated the problem in time. And, again, she had no intention of ever finding out.

But there were people who'd made the opposite choice. Indeed, in some of humanity's far-flung cultures, like Sharpton, where the cyborg was a sort of cultural icon, it was as routine for an individual to replace limbs and eyes with artificial improvements as it was for someone on Manticore to have her teeth cleaned and straightened. Or her ears pierced, for that matter. Personally, Honor couldn't imagine doing such a thing. In fact, the very thought made her uncomfortable—probably because she'd spent so much of her life in space. After so many years in an artificial exterior environment, she felt no temptation whatsoever to turn her own body into an artificial interior environment, whatever advantages over mere flesh and blood it might have brought with it.

Of course, Honor is both a Genie and a Cyborg.

Zakharra wrote:I was thinking more along the lines of visible eye/ear/limp implants/replacements, like you see in some cyberpunk themes, as well as full body cyborgs.

Weird Harold wrote:

Zakharra wrote:I was thinking more along the lines of visible eye/ear/limp implants/replacements, like you see in some cyberpunk themes, as well as full body cyborgs.

Oops. Forgot to label the citation; it's Ashes of Victory Chapter seventeen.

Like most citations, it doesn't cover the entire subject. There is more about cyborgs and prosthetics in chapter seventeen. In effect, there are just about any version of cyborg you want to imagine somewhere in human occupied space, but it is a fringe sub-culture like steampunk or goth is today -- with the added fillip that somewhere there is an entire planet or two full of steampunkers and/or goths.