Thought occurred to me on the way to work this morning: In fiction, there are cool powerful people where...

Thought occurred to me on the way to work this morning: In fiction, there are cool powerful people where people have parts of their body replaced by technology, with the 6 Million Dollar Man being a perfect example. In reality, no replacement is going to be as functional as the original part, and while mechanical muscles may be more powerful than biological muscles, the cool arm is going to be connected to a normal skeleton, so it can't lift a car. So, you only get a bionic thing if the biological thing is utterly nonfunctional either by defect, age or trauma.

The Singularity/Post-Human dream is digitizing the human brain. Per Kurzweil, at first it'd be a destructive process, requiring the material being scanned to be torn apart piece-by-piece. Who would be willing to go through this process? People whose physical bodies are nearing end stage anyway, by defect, age or trauma. 

The more technology removes accidents and connectedness eliminates ware, the less trauma will be a factor. The more medicine advances, the less defects will be life-threatening. This means that the first people who will be digitized humans will be the elderly.
 
Now, what to do with that....

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