#same with 'computer algorithms' being written by humans and thus perpetrating human bias

[ofwolvesandshatteredshields]

Playing Deus Ex: Mankind Divided again and again delighted by how this series treats people's cyborg-ization (i.e. "augmentation"). The portrayal of societal effects of augmentation are, shall we say, a bit heavy-handed, but the personal/individual portrayals are really good.

One of my favorite scenes is early on. Adam's taken some damage and needs repairs from an expert, a happy-go-lucky machinist in a punk rock jacket named Koller. Adam has to be unconscious for this so he sits back in a chair and shuts his eyes while Koller goes to work.

There's no cutscene of the repairs. Instead your eyes drift blearily open. Koller is freaking OUT. He's scrambling and dropping his tools. He won't tell you what's wrong. Your HUD isn't showing up. He asks if you want some water. What a stupid question at a time like this. You accept, because there is literally nothing else you can do.

When you wake up you learn that there is a bunch of high tech shit inside your body that no one told you about before. Koller asks when it might have been installed, and Adam notes a period after his rescue from the Panchaea explosion from which he remembers little. This echoes the time in the first game after his rescue from the Sarif Industries assault when he had most of his body—including three healthy limbs—replaced with cybernetics by his employer, without knowledge (let alone consent) from Adam himself. Adam goes, "I'm starting to think I hate being unconscious."

It's a rather uneasy take on the whole "cybernetic superman" trope. Flesh is you, grows with you and changes with you. Cybernetics are built by somebody else and welded on by somebody besides that—people with their own goals and intents that don't necessarily align with yours, and who might very well have more control over your own body than you do. When it is much easier to disregard a person's bodily autonomy, of course it will be disregarded by those who can get away with it. The messy truth is that despite visions of a machine utopia, humans can never be entirely removed from the equation.