Might as well go cyberpunk, I guess.

I want to be a cyborg but after seeing how tech, especially software, has developed (like, I don't even really want to buy a new car because how tf am I gonna fix it), I don't think I can trust it. Imagine if your ears' firmware just stops being supported.
Any cybernetics would have to be built for me by a hobbyist with a workshop full of Raspberry Pis or something
- Open source fitmware or nothing.
  
  and strictly offline
  
  Fitmware = Wetware?
  
  I want an open source electric car.
  I would download a car.
- You didn’t pay your subscription for your enhanced eyes, so you woke up blind this morning.
  
  Nah, you get downgraded to the essentials plan: 20/40 eyesight, dry eyeballs, ads on your peripheral vision and random eye twitching throughout the day
- Yeah, plus the "cutting edge" prosthetic tech we currently have is mostly overhyped marketing.
  There are about a dozen powered prosthetics I always see on social media that always look really cool and the "patients" always go on and on about how useful it is......What people don't realize is those "patients" are being paid by the manufacturer, and usually part of the deal is that they get the limb for free.
  They don't tell you about having to wear a heavy battery pack that only lasts for a couple hours. They don't tell you that you have to pre-program routines like tying your shoe laces. That you have to purposely concentrate on flexing residual muscle groups in your limb to activate those routines. Nor do they tell you that the majority of patients who own those devices usually revert back to a manual prosthetic for functional tasks, or just choose not to wear a prosthetic at all because they can achieve more function with their stumps.
  While prosthetics have started looking more futuristic and functional, unfortunately we haven't really advanced any technology that actually improves function and utility since the late 90's. And I highly doubt we'll ever make a prosthetic that provides more utility than the limb it's replacing, not in our lifetime at least.
  
  Plus, a lot of them just end up being no longer supported at all. Oopsie your Planned Obsolescent Leg needs replacing again
  
  I remember many years ago there was some study being done into deer antler as a way to integrate implants with zero chance of rejection (something about deer antler being bone that penetrates through the skin without causing any problems), and something about using squid cartilage for implanting circuitry for similar reasons, but the coolest advancement that I've seen for prosthetics has been 3d printing.
  I saw an open source project for 3d printing prosthetic limbs with a focus on making affordable prosthetics for kids since they grow so quickly they need new fittings quickly as well. And beyond that, I haven't heard of pretty much anything new in easily decades. The fact that much of our prosthetics technology isn't that different from what they had in the Civil War is sad.
- Yeah, if everyone started turning into a cyborg, walking becomimg a subscription-based service would be just a question of time.
- Jockey literally lost his exoskeleton due to end of life.
  
  People with bionic eye implants are going blind again after the gadget expired inside their bodies. More than 350 people have a discontinued retinal implant in their eyeballs. The invention was once a cutting-edge option for restoring sight, but it has been replaced by newer technologies.
- Any cybernetics would have to be built for me by a hobbyist with a workshop full of Raspberry Pis or something
  And by "or something," you probably mean 3d printers.
- and a few arduinos
- In a loose sense, any implant makes you a cyborg, in a more strict sense implants that control something in your body do. Heart rate control by a pacer, insulin level control by an implant, hearing aid, some more complicated implants all make you a cyborg but usually not the cyborg one imagines

I have an artificial lens in one eye (like a contact lens that's been glued in place) that has built in uv protection. Not cybernetic as such, but I'd say it was adjacent.
- Yeah that sounds cool af
  
  Lol, And all it cost me the ability to focus on anything not exexactly 37 inches away.
- Fun fact, many of the intra-ocular lenses and contact lenses that provide UV protection do so just by the properties of the material they are made of, not any special coating.
- A friend of mine changed his internal lenses to synthetic ones due to cataracts. He was used to the dim light of cataracts and it took him a while to get used to a brighter world.
  
  Dude had built in shades and didn't know it.

I like the word "burgerpunk" to describe our dystopia not as neon lights and cool sexy cyborgs but more the aesthetic of a DoorDash ad.
- I hate it, but it's perfect.
- Amazing. What's more burgerpunk than making AI images about burgerpunk game concept art?
  Coming to buggy early access 2025 on EA games subscription app
  Prompt:
  !physical game cover for latest game called "burgerpunk" inspired by boring, mundane real world problems. Collage of run down strip malls, boring office spaces, high gas prices and sad people stuck in traffic. "Super boring, 10/10 - IGN" !<
  
  Not boring enough IMO.
- Fuck, 2020 would have been so much more bearable if our food had been delivered by The Deliverator. You know, a highly qualified professional.
  ...Instead, in this region at least, the app economy bros employed a bunch of befuddled immigrants and also screwed them over contract-wise. So it's the sad kind of cyberpunk, not the funny kind of cyberpunk

Meanwhile IRL cool cybernetic implants: I'm sorry our company has been bought by Amazon and support for your eyes has been dropped. Please refer to a local surgeon to remove them at your expense.
- Begins to cry.
  Looks like you activated tears. We'll automatically upgrade your account to Emotions+, and start sending you Tear refills Pro Edition for $15.99 per month. You can stock up on Tears refills Pro Edition for the entire year at $189.99 and never worry about running out again!

We're approaching a cool cyberpunk future but can't even get wet streets with reflective purple neon signs 😔
- Talk to c/hydrohomies if you have trouble with streets not being wet enough
- Seattle has the wet streets covered. Someone just needs to install some signs.
  
  We've got the wonder bread sign what more could you want?
- Lots of places in East Asia with those vibes

We are not even going to get dense cities like Night City. Imagine how much worse the cyberpunk dystopia is going to be with a 2.5 hour commute each way from the suburbs along a mega highway.
- Look, us YIMBYs are trying our best, okay?
- Do NYC, Seattle, SF, London, Tokyo, and all of the other dense cities not exist anymore?
  
  None of those are even close to the density of Night City. Tokyo has a density of 6,363 persons/km^2, compared to Night City's density of 65,000 people/km^2.
  Also those are 'old' cities. They have historical reasons for increasing density. Night City is a city founded and built by mega corps, represents the 'new' world that the mega corps want to build. My point is that in our world, the type of cities that are being built and our mega corps want, are all suburban spawl.

This is fair, if we had neon shit and cybernetics it would make the world a little cooler I guess.
- Nah, they'd make it like repo.

Reality check: Life's more "flickering office bulb" than "cyberpunk neon dream." Guess we're stuck in Blade Runner: Budget Cut Edition.
- That real "we have cyberpunk at home" aesthetic

there are plenty of cybernetic implants that do not work anymore because the company that makes them refuses to update them so that part is totally already a thing

there's zero punk in our current society
- I honestly believe the closest thing to real world cyberpunk is the anti corporate / foss / selfhosted digital sovereignty "ideology" that lemmy coincidentally is a part of. For the rest, like cyberdecks and body augmentation we just have to wait a bit.
  
  If you got a powerful tablet and installed Kali on it, isn't that effectively a cyberdeck?
- Sweetie, we're all being punks right now using pirate reddit. What's more punk than undermining oligarch control of social platforms?
  
  Frying their brains with our cyberdecks?
- Well, there's "low life" part for sure

I wanted star trek but I got cyberpunk.

Depending on where you live, you can also have the cool neon aesthetic.

We also have killer robot dogs and illicit cloning labs irl now.

Fuck neon, LEDs, all that bright shit spoiling the night. Razor-sharp splashes of light pollution is not an aesthetic, they are an eyestrain and an ad space. My homies enjoy old districts and wilderness where they can relax and see the stars for once.
- That doesn't sound very dystopian

We do have Elon Musk brain implants now. Any takers? Didn't think so. You do not want to go cyberpunk

We already have cool cybernetic implants. We also have even cooler corporate greed and a massive lack of right-to-repair laws so that you can get stuck with a deactivated implant!

My grandpa's pacemaker has beef with being left out of the, "cool cybernetic implants," category.

In real life we had cybernetic implants shut down by corporations because they weren't profitable enough.
I don't think there's anything more cyberpunk than that.
We could definitely use more neon though. Might have to look into WLED and light strips again.
- Or worse, your implants start getting repo'd by said corpos. And there's no Jude Law.
  
  2010 repomen movie...

All of the bad stuff, none of the cool stuff.

If you're going to make me live in a dystopia, then there better be a cool aesthetic at least.

definitely seems like weve been ripped off

Also you don't have cyberdecks with 40mm microCD drives but smartphones without expendable storage.

those cool cybernetic implants aren't that cool imo

Left is advertising, right is actual result

You forgot firearm vending machines and rampant gang violence.

70s, 80s and 90s were absolute peak Western world and we should go back there and live there forever.
inb4 life was worse because "insert irrelevant shit no one cares about here"
- In Matrix the robots said that 1999 was the peak of human civilization, maybe they were into something.
- Define "Western world".
  
  EU (including UK) + US + AUS + NZ.