Cybernetics or Cloning

[Stravo]

Say Q offers the Earth the following choice:

Star Wars Cloning technology

or

Star Wars Cyberntic Technology


The cloning technology would be from Clone War era so you could clone just about anything and rapidly as well as teh flash imprinting that allows you to bring a clone to a faster rate of maturity. No weapons tech, no comensurate medical tech increase, just the genetic techniques and means revolving around cloning.

The Cybernetic technology would be limited to what could be grafted on a person so we're talking limbs, neural jacks, bionic eyes, etc but NOT droid tech. The technology would include materials that are very similar and resistant as Star Wars cybernetic limbs. This would also include computer interfaces and such between a man and a machine.

Which would you choose and why?

[DrkHelmet]

This is a tough one, but I'd go with cybernetics. It has fewer moral implications. There's alot of people who would make moral claims regarding the creation of human beings. That's something that should only belong to God and etc etc. Cybernetics has far fewer moral implications for people to argue with.

Also, the ability to interface with the brain would grant us ALOT of new technologies. It would not take us long to put a computer in our brains that could connect to the internet and access information just by thinking about it, and then returning that data directly to you.

[Maraxus]

I'd go with Cybernetics as well, simply because having MMI would rule.

[Pcm979]

Just a nitpick, but if we've got the tech to make artificial limbs, lungs, etcetera and the computing power to run said limbs lungs etcetera, aren't we more than halfway to droid tech?

This is a tricky one, but I'm going to have to go with the cybernetics, because I think the cloning tech would be banned almost everywhere overnight.

[brianeyci]

Does Wars have technology where you download your consciousness into a computer?

Even not, its still easy to say cybernetics, since cloning would just create more problems than answers. We'd have to feed more people, and there's all the ethical issues.

Brian

[Civil War Man]

Cybernetics, because although we have technology that allows us to create cybernetic limbs, they are nowhere near the sophistication of the Star Wars equivalent.

And although it would be nice to be able to grow a clone army, I think it would encourage our political leaders too much. I find it preferable to gain the technology to allow us to attach new parts to wounded soldiers so they can still have functional lives.

[Pcm979]

Not only that, but the SW Cybernetics tech can make internal organs too. People whose tickers are timing out wouldn't have to wait for somebody to get smashed in a car crash any more.

[Sharpshooter]

Hmm. It's sort of a tough decision.

I can see where people are getting worried about cloning, but what about the benifits that could be reaped from applying the techniques to an area such as food production? With the ability to create an organism with a cellular production rate in likely excess of twenty times its norm, we could make incredible cuts in the amount of time it would take for livestock to be raised to a level of physical maturity, as well as possibly the amount of nutritional material that would have to be supplied to it. Beef, fish, poultry - it might be possible to produce meat of all types on a scale far greater than anything today, helping to reduce in magnitude those probolems such as world hunger and the price hikes that have been experienced in recent years regardinng meats and such. Not to mention the potential for creating a cloned limb or organ for those who might have lost it for some reason, though the integration of a limb might be something we can only achieve with a good many years more of research.

On the other hand, as has been pointed out already, there stands the potential for abuse of this technology for one's own end, as well as the moral and ethical dilemmas that result from creating a human clone.

Of course, cybernetics is an incredibly tempting choice to pick, as wel. While it might not alleviate the problems of food shortages and price hikes, it would allow those who've lost the use of an organ or a limb due to some circumstance to be able to regain those lost fuctions, posibly even to an extent better than before, and no longer would they have to wait in order to get a replacement organ or limb from a doner. This, too, comes with a potential problem - depending upon the cost of producing and integrating a cybernetic implant, even if the technology is posessed, it may be very well useless except to those with enough funds to be able to afford the equipment and the procedures.

It's a tough call...but I think I'd go ith the cloning technology, albeit with extreme scrutiny as to who is able to gain acces to it.

[Perseid]

I'd have to go with Cybernetics, even though Cloning could provide a solution for things like a food shortage or growing a new limb from the same person, the potential for abuse is more worrying than with Cybernetics. Also Cloning might not provide a solution to food shoratges in places like Africa, where the heads of government control what the people get in the way of food, water, and medical supplies.

With cybernetics we wouldn't just be able to remakes dismembered soldiers with new improved limbs, and provide people with mechanical internal organs when the biological ones fail, (replacement kidneys spring to mind not just replacement hearts). The cyber-tech would also allow us to finish making a bipedial robot, possibly with the ability to think, since scientists and engineers in the field are still trying to overcome the problems inherent with walking upright, with SW cybernetics they practically have the answer in front of them. It'd be like have all the answers to an exam in front of you with the only thing missing being which answer goes with which question.

[Cykeisme]

I'd have to go for cybernetics too. Without expounding further on the advantages that SW cybernetics tech would confer, what is there that cloning can do that cybernetics can't?

More efficient food production sounds good, but isn't starvation caused by poor distribution of food throughout the world, rather than an actual lack of the total amount of food? The only people who'd have the authority and monetary backing to implement the new Q-given tech would still be the same moneyed people as the ones today.

However, I would find perverse pleasure in creating a small army of Cyke-Clones to satisfy my proclivity for procreation..

[Zwinmar]

Id have to go with Cybernetics. Cloneing has too many weird and potentially revolutionary conotations

[Argosh]

I'd choose Cloning technology, just to be different from the rest of the answers here.
Cyber-ing yourself may be cool but its technology, your interface with the brain can be hacked for example. Gives the term 'zombie bot-net' a totally new meaning.

[Ender]

Cybernetics. It vastly improves our technology level in many more areas then cloning does. we get better computer processing, power cell, materials, mirco/nano construction, interface, etc technology.

[Sharpshooter]

I'd choose Cloning technology, just to be different from the rest of the answers here.
Cyber-ing yourself may be cool but its technology, your interface with the brain can be hacked for example. Gives the term 'zombie bot-net' a totally new meaning.

When has anyone with a cybernetic neural implant been hacked in the Wars-verse? Shoot, I don't even think they have such on the civilian market - it's actually more of a punishment to get a neural implant, which is supposedly the story with Lobot.

[Ender]

I'd choose Cloning technology, just to be different from the rest of the answers here.
Cyber-ing yourself may be cool but its technology, your interface with the brain can be hacked for example. Gives the term 'zombie bot-net' a totally new meaning.

When has anyone with a cybernetic neural implant been hacked in the Wars-verse? Shoot, I don't even think they have such on the civilian market - it's actually more of a punishment to get a neural implant, which is supposedly the story with Lobot.

It happened to Lobot actually. One of the old Marvel comics IIRC, it had Imperials using him to destroy cloud city.

[Sharpshooter]

It happened to Lobot actually. One of the old Marvel comics IIRC, it had Imperials using him to destroy cloud city.

Marvel? Figures I'd not have heard of it, then. Thanks for the update.

[General Brock]

Tough one. I'll go with cybernetics. They don't clone and graft new limbs on amputees, or seem to be able to regrow damaged spinal cords, or renew an older living body, which is all I'd want from cloning tech. The cyber replacements seem almost as enjoyable as the real thing, and if time catches up to me, cloning wouldn't be helpful anyway.