The issue exists already in wheelchairs being hard to repair and internal pacemakers incorrectly shocking people with unmodifiable software. Most electronics suck in terms of ownership but there are some which do not. With the electronics inside you, and connected to your brain, it becomes even more important that the user is the one in control. I hope we can progress to that with cyborg tech too.

So did I. But after the new Deus Ex games and looking at the real tech scene evolve recently, I'm feeling more and more that just maybe Togusa had the right idea staying natural.

My choom.

It's probably straightforward to map the wavelengths of the visible spectrum to the wavelengths of audible tones. But the choice of mapping is subjective and any further interpretation/effects even more so.

hearing colour might be cool

You could just do LSD to get temporary synesthesia for that. 🤷🏻‍♂️

I think the term cyborg is reserved for actual replacement parts or implants. Because if you count Hawking using his chair, you'd have to conclude that whatever caveman that first used a tool is the real first cyborg.

I think generally, assistive devices like Hawking's wheelchair/speech synth wouldn't qualify one for the title of "cyborg", since they're replacing lost/damaged functionality, and didn't grant him any abilities not already available to the average person. Whereas Harbisson's modification is giving him additional abilities that he didn't previously have and are outside of the typical human experience.

I call my hernia mesh one level of dermal plating

I know somebody who has implated hearing aids. If they're not a cyborg, I don't know who is.

Those are a part of the image of Hawkings but not a part of his body.

Reading the article, it looks a lot more like The Terminal Man.