So it’s the eve of 2004. Things have changed dramatically for me this year.
No, my ability to use a spell checker has not improved. I do not care. I go and see the Chiropractor about twice a month. I have not been to my doctor in a while. I did have my wisdom teeth removed. I’m glad I did that.
I feel as though I’m declining. It’s subtle right now, but it will become more pronounced. I think it will start in two places: My right leg and my eyes.
I am going to be a victim of the postmodern decline of the body. I’m going to try to be instrumental in the use of prosthetics, and computer assistive technologies to forestall any effects of the decline.
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The most fascinating part about the decline is the fact that alot my friends think that parts of their body are useless anymore.
One example is a person I used to work with. He wants to get rid of all of his teeth. Replacing them with implants. He thinks that his natural teeth will not last, and that having to get checkedd for cavities on a regular basis is a hassle. He’d have them all replaced with implants if he could.
What do you think of that?
Another guy I work with is literally counting on the development of the artificial heart. He’s gonna stick one of those in, just when his starts to fail.
I have a dysplastic hip. The ball does not fit in the socket correctly. It’s painful. It is responsible for degradation and wasting of my right knee. Which will have early arthritis. Oooh fun… When I have to get the hip replacement, I keep on wondering if I might be able to parameterize the control of it, so that I could improve performance… Imagine a hip with an ethernet jack, and snmp management!
What I’ve found is that there are alot more people around that think this way than I thought.
The cause of this is as far as I can tell the modern work ethic. We just dont have the time to make ourselves healthy, and we assume that the problem is somehow linked to some deficiency in our bodies. And not our environment, or how we sit, and how we walk, or even whether we walk. And ultimately, there may be some deficiency, but we never really see where that came ffrom, because we are caught up in the symptoms.
It’s the symptoms that are causing this physical decline that we are on. The symptoms, and the treatment of those symptoms.
There’s some debate going on these days over what it will mean to be human in the future. Are you still yourself, wheen your brain is kept alive in a vat of nutrient solution, and powered by some array of electrodes? I guess that there’s going to be a turing test for that - you are yourself - when you can’t fool our best friend that you are who you say you are. They sit at a terminal, and interrogate someone that might be you, and have to decide whether it’s you or not. Anyway, this is a topic for antoher time.
I would be willing to be in the first human trials for a brain storage augmentation device. Imagine an extra 160Gigs of long term storage…
People have started to accept the constant degradation of their physical bodies, and in a sense rebel against it with an appetite that I did not think I woudl see this early in my life. It does not distress me, because I am one of thses people. I am putting off my hip replacement as long as possible, becuase hte technology will get better all the time. I see friends who are starting to exoect, or at least accept the replacement of basic essential body parts with prosthetics, as though it is just a thing that you do. Not a last ditch effort at life.
So what is my thesis? Well, It was just unexpected, that’s all. I have a kind of liberal social-eceonomic explanation for it, which is probably mostly bullshit, but still, we work in ways that lend themslevels to checking out our bodies condition, and then when something goes wrong its generally pretty far along…
I guess all I’m saying is, it’s not June and Ward Cleaver Land anymore is it?
