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[Graanvlokkie]

I too must declare that my post of utter brilliance seems to have disappeared 

Not really 

[Silver Night]

I think there might be two broad and sometimes overlapping categories here:

Body modification for decortaive, cultural, or artistic purposes; and body modifications that serve a purpose or do something themselves.

Pierced ears and pacemakers, basically.

Like I said, they do overlap.

I've always hoped that a variety of body modifications (of both types) are relatively common throughout Eve. Given that there are huge companies that specialize in cybernetics for each empire, it seems likely that at least certain sorts of inexpensive implants and the like are fairly common.

There are factors that make it seem likely that each empire embraces some forms of body modification, practical, decorative, or both.

We know that the Amarr are masters of cybernetics, given that they managed to keep the emperor before last alive so long. That might also mean that, particularly among the upper echelons, implants could hold some social significance (Aridshapur right hand, etc.).

The Gallente seem like good candidates too, probably more expansive on the decorative front than any other empire, but also in military and medical fields. I could see the Gallente and the Amarr both, actually, having the greatest level of overlap between modifications that serve a useful purpose and are status symbols or decorative at the same time.

The Caldari, with their love of and need for force multipliers seem the most likely to focus on practical, useful, effecient military implants. It seems to me though that corporations do a great deal to hold onto valuable employees. Advanced medical implants, and perhaps even ways for the corporation to monitor the well being (and status, and location, and incolinations) of particulrly valuable employees might not be unommon. Ishukone is also the big distributer of the TCMC, which seems like a very sophisticated implant that is at least cheap enough to use on slaves and Senators.

Tthe Minmatar have incorporated fairly advanced body modifications into their culture in the form of nano-tattoos and the Voluval already. Body modifications seem to play an important cultural role. That might have interesting implications for how practical body modifications and viewed and executed.

[Casiella]

I really need to go back and re-read the relevant chapter in The Burning Life that went into detail on all this. Hrm.

[hellgremlin]

I do remember Istvaan's long post.  It too was brilliant, and thank you for reminding me who wrote that damn story that inspired me to write about 'tweaker parties' when I was flailing around trying to figure out how in the hell Sabi was still alive (this after Soter fished her out of one of my old character applications and dropped her in my lap).  Oh, yeah, and thanks for the story too, in case that wasn't clear from the previous demented sentence.

Well, at least someone saw it ;f

[Silver Night]

Yeah, sorry about that, I shoudl have stuck the old backstage in maintenance mode earlier. :X

This topic seems to have suffered the most as there were several good posts in the hours that were lost.

[Seriphyn]

The Mantis fighter-bomber desc describes the three pilots as being "heavily augmented", and Silas already brought up the CDIA video.

Also, the Xenocracy artwork. Created to be intimidating, but the administrator wasn't exactly like "Hm I've never seen this before"...so, I guess "augmentations" do very much exist.

I imagine areas of Gallente society, like bars, that are dedicated to those with extensive cyberpunky bodymods. Similar to Minmatar tattoos.

[hellgremlin]

I imagine areas of Gallente society, like bars, that are dedicated to those with extensive cyberpunky bodymods. Similar to Minmatar tattoos.

Since my last post got nuked I guess I'll relink:

http://eve.klaki.net/fiction/infection.html

One of my stories, featuring just such a joint.

[Esna Pitoojee]

The Mantis fighter-bomber desc describes the three pilots as being "heavily augmented",

Linky please? I've never seen this description.

[Seriphyn]

http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Shadow

[Shintoko Akahoshi]

The Minmatar have incorporated fairly advanced body modifications into their culture in the form of nano-tattoos and the Voluval already. Body modifications seem to play an important cultural role. That might have interesting implications for how practical body modifications and viewed and executed.

I think they also used fairly heavy body modifications for soldiers from the time of the rebellion. The Minmatar introduction from CCP features a photo of a Minmatar soldier during the rebellion sporting what looks like extensive modifications.

[Kohiko Sun]

Something that wouldn't be obvious to an observer but would be impossible not to notice for a user would be Augmented Reality mods. It's shown in sci-fi movies as something that looks like a HUD in the user's field of view, the stuff that overlays what they see with information.

It would be insanely useful in a space environment. There's the small stuff like just knowing what time it is without have to look at a watch, sure. But, think of a tourist finding himself on a station or colony. There could be signs everywhere in dozens of local languages, people all around talking in even more, lights, activity, advertisements, announcements, intimidating security types in black body armor, exotic smells - information overload! So confusing and overwhelming; how can he ever find his way? But, it's cool. It's ok. He has AR, so his connection to the station's wireless network lets it overlay a line that he can follow all the way to the door conveniently glowing green in his vision. Yay! He just found his hotel without getting lost in the crazy press of people.

Now, later, this same tourist is on a ship going somewhere else. Oh, no! Pirates are attacking. "Our cruisers can't repel firepower of that magnitude!" There are only seconds until the ship ends in a blue flash. Everybody is scrambling and racing to the escape pods. The artificial gravity is bouncing all over the place in wild fluctuations until it dies completely. The alarm to abandon ship is blaring, and the lights snap off, on, flutter, and the die. The only thing letting him see where he's going are the flashing warning lights and the flicker from a fire. Fire! Ohmygod, fire in space! It's pure chaos and hell with nothing but a horrible death unless he can make it to a pod. But, he has one lifeline: his AR overlay that still has information stored from just before the local network died with the rest of the systems. Follow that line for your life! Don't open the red door; red means there's open vacuum on the other side. Take the green one and go until you see the blue arrow pointing to the lifeboat's hatch.

Later, he's made it back home. It's such a boring job repairing life support systems in this mining colony on some moon. He's walking down a long tunnel full of wires and pipes until he finds what he's looking for: a junction panel conveniently marked with an electronic sign that says, "Hey! Something's wrong here." Just by looking at it, he can see that the power line going into the panel is running at 98% efficiency, but the line going out is only at 0.9%. It's time to get to work and fix it. How helpful it is that a pop-up of the schematics and every bit of information he needs appears off to one side of his vision.

If he's lucky, he can get done in time to meet the woman he met on a social networking site for dinner. He even copy and pasted her details, so that when he looks at her, he can instantly see that fried Caldari seafood is something she likes. The cook is already starting to make some, and he's able to see the nutritional information, expiration date, and preparation instructions thanks to the information encoded on the package's RFID. Meanwhile, she works on a safety crew and is tracking down the dot from the RFID chip of a child that got lost after going to explore the mines. And, in the park area on the main level, a group of teenagers are running around, pointing at each other, and shouting, "Pew pew!", while they play Halo 9847865 AR Edition in a multiplayer deathmatch.

That's all with just vision. Imagine someone wired for sound (literally), or touch, smell, and taste.

Of course, there's always the opportunity for spam and malware. Who wants to walk along a station level full of casinos all blaring pop-ups of how "YOU COULD BE A WINNER!" or walk down the grocery store aisle with things shouting at you that they offer "33% more for the same price as the leading competitor!"? Or, more dangerously, you could be 'jammed' by someone overloading you with illusionary lights and sound like an electronic flashbang. Worst would be a hack with a realistic overlay of reality - what looks like the bathroom door to you is actually an airlock!

[hellgremlin]

The Minmatar have incorporated fairly advanced body modifications into their culture in the form of nano-tattoos and the Voluval already. Body modifications seem to play an important cultural role. That might have interesting implications for how practical body modifications and viewed and executed.

I think they also used fairly heavy body modifications for soldiers from the time of the rebellion. The Minmatar introduction from CCP features a photo of a Minmatar soldier during the rebellion sporting what looks like extensive modifications.

I just had a strange thought about the Voluval thing.

Let's look at it from an outside perspective. A tribal culture, with a deeply ingrained tradition, where they mix weird chemicals and shoot themselves full of nanites. As a result their body is marked and, socially, they're treated accordingly; some become leaders, others are outcast.

Now, if you were a superior race, say Jovian, with god-like technology levels, and you were interested in cultivating a genetic stock for yourself, possibly to refresh your own diminishing genetic stock, you'd want to promote certain traits and reduce others to make the basic stock compatible with your own genome. If you were a superior race few in numbers, you'd want to engineer this process of multi-generational genetic tinkering to be a self-running affair, without much of your own interference required.

The process would continue over generations, thousands of years, until that basic genetic stock became worthwhile. Even if you're an advanced race which has relied on cloning and genetic engineering to become something far different from the people that crossed into New Eden 20k years previous, you might still have samples of what your genome used to look like before you mutilated it. So you seed worlds with newborn humans grown from that stock.

After a while you approach a tribal culture you've created at an early point in its evolution (this advanced race works in timeframes of millenia,) and impart upon them the knowledge (or at least use) of these nanites. You establish a ritual in their cultural background; the Voluval. Your genetic stock self-administers a genome test disguised as a ritual, with the test's result manifested as a Voluval mark. Those marked with bad marks, triggered by possessing undesirable genetic traits, are cast out, diminishing their contribution to the gene pool, and those with desirable traits are promoted in society, with all the seed-sowing benefits that entails.

Mind: blown.

edit: It's interesting that the Ray of Matar, the awesomest Voluval mark to get, looks like a blinking light or button or something.

[Mithfindel]

Notes on AR: Some of that is already being tested. What New Eden adds is likely more customization option (say, choose the language of the ads you want to see, more efficient tagging, animation or interactivity of the virtual reality part etc.). Also, when I was in a conference where one of the presentations was about AR, a few professors stated after the conference, pretty flat out, "that would have useful applications in porn".

[Louella Dougans]

"genetically enhanced fast-twitch muscle fibres" "modified muscle and bone", feature in a blood raider assassin in that novel.

[Saede Riordan]

I've always sort of RPed that genemods are common as sin on a small level, for instance, Nikita has naturally blue hair, and has a whole slew of minor genetic tweaks to make her stronger, faster, age slower, and be more resistant to illness, that seems to me like something that would be practically standard when having a child in New Eden. On top of that, Nikita's got a whole slew of cybernetic enhancements installed. She's basically a walking electronics warfare platform, and thats not getting into the weirder stuff.
For instance, I have a friend who rp's a catgirl, like, full on, and sure it could be done badly, but to be honest, it totally makes sense within fiction, with the way she plays the character. And its actually inspired me to make a fiction post on "genemods in Gallente culture" or something of that ilk, haven't done it yet because :effort: but might poke seri to conspire about it.