The fields of medical nanobots and cybernetics has been advancing at a fast rate in the last few years.

Do you think it would be possible in the near future to have cybernetic humans, such as the Borg or some of the characters in Shadowrun ?

We already do have cybernetic humans. We have cochlear implants that can cure people of deafness, artificial eyes and corrective retinal implants. We have computer brain interfaces so that people who were previously thought to be "locked in" can communicate. We have brain implants to prevent people from suffering seizures and WiFi enabled hearts.
There are artificial limbs that work using existing nerve endings and can even provide touch feedback. We even have people like Pistorius whose artificial limbs were said to give him an advantage over able bodied runners.

Of course all of these are only available for medical reasons and I guess what you are asking is do you think people one day will be able to walk into a store and buy a new eye or an uprated arm that will enable you to crush cars.

Well not yet but in the future (even in the near future) I think you might if you have enough money and are maschochistic enough to want to get this kind of extreme body modification.

There are already some tattoo places that have implanted GPS chips, RFIDs and less under peoples skin.

Considering the extreme body modification people do today that have no other purpose then esthetic, I expect it will be very soon that we will see people do modifications that also have a function, without having a prior medical need.

There is a bit of a hurdle though to overcome the idea to replace a perfectly healthy bodypart with one that possibly have better function, but is untested.

I guess that is why most of todays cyborgs do it for medical reasons.

Not much to lose if you couldn't use your limb at all before...

We have the tech needed.

The biggest obstacles is still the risk for infection, and other medical complications.

They are among us even as we speak.

Artificial limbs which were not mere "wooden pegs" but quite advanced, operational, and more and more versatile mechanical prothesics have been available since the mid 15th century and popularized during the early 16th century with Götz von Berlichingen -- provided that you had enough money.

However, even in the late 20th century, artificial limbs were not really that much better (my neighbour had one of these having lost his right arm, it sure was better than no arm at all, but meh...), and they still are not so awesome today that you would want to cut off your right arm to get a mechanical replacement. Which, by the way, even if the arm had super powers, would be a very stupid idea. So your arm feels and works like a natural arm and is strong enough to lift a car (and it all works with an AA-sized nuclear battery that lasts for 150 years). Too bad that lifting a car with that arm will break your scapula or crush your spine, whichever breaks first. Oh right, you could pull a Wolverine, and have a complete metal skeleton. Good luck with that.

Yes, we do have artificial cochlea implants and artificial retinas, but they are very poor. Better than being deaf or blind alltogether, for sure. But, well, meh. Yes, we have pacemakers, both for the heart and for the brain, but while the former is in the mean time a pretty rock solid thing (also due to the lack of complexity), the latter is, again, "meh". It somehow works, kind of, sometimes, but it's somewhat fishing in troubled waters, much like barber-surgeons did in the middle ages. Yes, they're tampering on a much higher level with much more advanced technical equipment, but they're still only tampering. It's not like putting a wire into someone's brain and having a pacemaker fire electric stimuli is a well-founded scientific thing. It's meddling with something that we do not fully understand, and by accident or sheer luck, it kind of works, sometimes.

Now, nano-robots that reprogram humans on the cellular level... hum... OK. Good luck with that. I wouldn't know whether the idea of meddling with your DNA is more scary or the fact that having successfully meddled with 10-20% of your cells will have your immune system pick up the now incompatible surface markers and start attacking those 20% of your cells. Unless of course you meddle with the immune system first, in which case it will attack the other 80% of your cells. Or, you kill everything with a high dose of gamma rays, so you don't have any surviving leucozytes at all any more. But of course then you'll also the major part of the other cells...

TL;DR

Yes, a lot of stuff is possible nowadays, and obviously a lot of more stuff will be possible and will be done in the future, but most of it is (and will be) rather puny and mostly useless. No "Borgs", sorry.

I think it will happen, sooner or later, but for any near- or mid-future applications it will be far cheaper and better to have an external tool do what you want than a cyborg enhancement. I could imagine lots of cybernetic trinkets becoming common, but I'm imagining stuff more like novel jewelry than superpowers. Plus, the second the enhancements become more than that they'll be regulated into oblivion, making them less common than whatever their level of inherent awesomeness would suggest.

I still want one of these though. I'd also enjoy things like integrated computers for music, video, etc. being always with me and thought-controllable, but I doubt that what I'm envisioning will be available within my lifetime.

Artificial limbs which were not mere "wooden pegs" but quite advanced, operational, and more and more versatile mechanical prothesics have been available since the mid 15th century and popularized during the early 16th century with Götz von Berlichingen -- provided that you had enough money.

However, even in the late 20th century, artificial limbs were not really that much better (my neighbour had one of these having lost his right arm, it sure was better than no arm at all, but meh...), and they still are not so awesome today that you would want to cut off your right arm to get a mechanical replacement. Which, by the way, even if the arm had super powers, would be a very stupid idea. So your arm feels and works like a natural arm and is strong enough to lift a car (and it all works with an AA-sized nuclear battery that lasts for 150 years). Too bad that lifting a car with that arm will break your scapula or crush your spine, whichever breaks first. Oh right, you could pull a Wolverine, and have a complete metal skeleton. Good luck with that.

Yes, we do have artificial cochlea implants and artificial retinas, but they are very poor. Better than being deaf or blind alltogether, for sure. But, well, meh. Yes, we have pacemakers, both for the heart and for the brain, but while the former is in the mean time a pretty rock solid thing (also due to the lack of complexity), the latter is, again, "meh". It somehow works, kind of, sometimes, but it's somewhat fishing in troubled waters, much like barber-surgeons did in the middle ages. Yes, they're tampering on a much higher level with much more advanced technical equipment, but they're still only tampering. It's not like putting a wire into someone's brain and having a pacemaker fire electric stimuli is a well-founded scientific thing. It's meddling with something that we do not fully understand, and by accident or sheer luck, it kind of works, sometimes.

Now, nano-robots that reprogram humans on the cellular level... hum... OK. Good luck with that. I wouldn't know whether the idea of meddling with your DNA is more scary or the fact that having successfully meddled with 10-20% of your cells will have your immune system pick up the now incompatible surface markers and start attacking those 20% of your cells. Unless of course you meddle with the immune system first, in which case it will attack the other 80% of your cells. Or, you kill everything with a high dose of gamma rays, so you don't have any surviving leucozytes at all any more. But of course then you'll also the major part of the other cells...

TL;DR

Yes, a lot of stuff is possible nowadays, and obviously a lot of more stuff will be possible and will be done in the future, but most of it is (and will be) rather puny and mostly useless. No "Borgs", sorry.

Nobody mentioned lifting a car. I said crush a car which could be done with the car on the ground. As for if somebody would be willing to loose a perfectly good arm to have an artificial limb, well no not the average person but then there are extreme body modification artists who have steel skull implants, tattooed eyeballs, snake tongues and triple split penises. If people are willing to go to that extream length then yes once a good enough artificial limb comes along then somebody will be crazy enough to do it.

As for the actual Borg. The only key thing I remember about the Borg is the hive mind thing and that you needed to be assimilated to be a part of it. Using VR, Google Glass and the internet I think we can already go a long way to achieve this hive mind without people having to be turned into machines. In fact due to the miniaturisation of technology I think in some respects we've already surpassed the clunky technology that the Borg needed in ST to perform assimilation.

Speaking of Google Glass the reason it failed and became this decades segway is because it looked stupid. I have no doubt that Google are already researching on a next gen model that would fit into a pair of ordinary prescription glasses or maybe even a contact lense.

Head transplant patient 'making science'

That one is not just ridiculous, but ridiculous in a slap-face-fall-off-chair way on so many accounts (both from a medical/technical perspective and from an logistic/organization one) that I'm not sure what to say. Which doesn't happen often

Best joke I've read in a while.

while a head transplant may seem absurd, (sorry... my analysis was that "italy" was a critical part of that head-line)

this convo could dip rapidly into very fringe areas. eg. the u.s. army has made several news releases re: "synthetic telepathy", you can find berkeley videos of peoples thoughts from scans.

these concepts may all seem very discrete and clinical separately. placed within the context of human culture, it gets messy fast, as empires like to develop people as resources. this can happen on a relatively large scale in some isolated communities (consider the raeliens commune in oregon or white eagle lodge in crestone) which are safely seen as "non-institutional" like most of the mkultra and monarch stuff mumble mumble mumble tavistock, jehovah's witnesses in newcastle australia, my, they were a fright. no point in saying anything, they'd only want "proof".

people don't often hear about the sad cases that eg. come out of silk road... folks who "order some lsd from someone online" and get god knows what from god knows who tested on them, who take a continued interest in their subsequent affairs and life becomes complicated.

..our Good Friend james walbert in wired magazine..
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/07/court-to-defendant-stop-blasting-that-mans-mind/

a real Awesome Americana Story there...

business partner attempts to squeeze him out... james wakes up, been out for a few days, goes to the doctor, doctor observes he's got some metal things stabbed into his ears.

jmes has around half a dozen implants in his neck alone, for tracking and torture. his aurals don't work, which makes him extremely fortunate.

i know james well enough, and can direct you to hundreds of similar testimonies, with CAT scans and so forth.. the jesse beltrans and john halls of the world.. heck, they gave alan turing titties..

but no one would know. nanotech and the accustomisation of this culture to control methodology (our willibngness to be entertained) - trying to point it out to people is a thoroughly pointless endeavour. everyone believes they possess free will, which is a desirable criteria in an agent.