I used to wear a baseball hat.. for a while I even wore it sideways, or backwards. It was only after I stopped wearing it all together that I noticed how much people were treating me like an idiot. A few years later I discovered I was shorted sighted and got glasses and discovered another way to get people to instantly treat you differently. I hear that if you hold documents at arms length to read them people think you are older and treat you with more respect, haven't tried that one myself.

So yeah, although you might have some magic baseball hat that makes you smarter, it's not going to matter much, people are still going to treat you like an invalid.

 

Borging ourselves might some day prove useful, but so far neither science fiction nor real life has shown this to be of much use beyond scientific curiosity and bragging rights.

What science fiction have you been reading? Even a simple (but still out-of-reach technically) brain-computer interface has obvious uses - if a keyboard is useful, a BCI is useful. I hope technology progresses in my lifetime to the point that I can have a terminal emulator surgically implanted in my head.

Furthermore, what reality do you live in? Neural interfaces are already being used to give more natural control of prosthetic limbs, and prosthetic eyes are giving sight to the blind. The medical uses of the current technology are already nothing short of miraculous, and it will only get better from here.

Agreed; I had to wear a home EEG fifteen years ago, complete with wires and paste all over my head, and a cassette recorder on my hip. This sounds much cleaner, and more socially acceptable.