Technology

I am not depressed, but I will never get a brain implant for any reason. The brain is the final frontier of privacy, it is the one place I am free. If that is taken away I am no longer truly autonomous, I am no longer truly myself.

I understand this is how older generations feel about lots of things, like smartphones, which I am writing this from, and I understand how stupid it sounds to say "but this is different!", but like... really. This is different. Whatever scale smartphones, drivers licenses, personalized ads, the internet, smart home speakers.... whatever scale all these things lie on in terms of "panopticon-ness", a brain implant is so exponentially further along that scale as to make all the others vanish to nothingness. You can't top a brain implant. A brain implant is a fundamentally unspeakable horror which would inevitably be used to subjugate entire peoples in a way so systematically flawless as to be almost irreversible.

This is how it starts. First it will be used for undeniable goods, curing depression, psychological ailments, anxiety, and so on. Next thing you know it'll be an optional way to pay your check at restaurants, file your taxes, read a recipe - convenience. Then it will be the main way to do those things, and then suddenly it will be the only way to do those things. And once you have no choice but to use a brain implant to function in society, you'll have no choice but to accept "thought analytics" being reported to your government and corporations. No benefit is worth a brain implant, don't even think about it (but luckily, I can't tell if you do).