after all, he's spent *years* as a clear-thinking machine trapped in an essentially nonfunctional body. The notion of being able to "move" into something that at least gets around by itself, without having to hire minders and chair-pushers, *has* to be attractive to someone in that position.

Wonder how much C. Reeve would pay for such a gizmo?

And on the other side -- Hawking probably can't, from his own experience, see much of a downside to extending the ability to, e.g., compute of the human mind; see reasoning above.

AKA "consider the source"