Tag Archives: nanotechnology

February 9, 2017 · 6:38 am

Universal Basic Income: A Sexy Idea For The Future?

Whenever a bold, ambitious new ideas comes along, there are sure to be skeptics and critics. It’s an unfortunate part of human nature. Our caveman brains get too comfortable with a situation, even if that situation is terrible and involves us shitting in a ditch. We’ll resist change at every turn until it becomes exceedingly inconvenient.

While I imagine there was plenty of resistance to those who introduced ideas like democracy, gender equality, and circumcision, some ideas make so much sense that people have to go out of their way to make excuses. Granted, they’ll still find those excuses. People are tragically adept at clinging to outdated ideas, even when they’ve been thoroughly debunked. Just look at creationists.

There’s no question that our current situation in the world has room for improvement. It’s true, although you’d never know it by watching Fox News for more than five minutes, that the human race is getting better. It’s also true that there’s still a lot of suffering.

According to GlobalIssues.org, there are over one billion people living in poverty. I’m not just talking about the kind of poverty that makes a Big Mac seem like a luxury either. According to UNICEF, around 21,000 children die a day because of poverty-related issues. I think most of us can agree that when children are dying, it’s a big freaking issue.

Even rich countries, like the United States, can’t escape the effects of poverty. According to the most recent census data, about 13.5 percent of the population, which amounts to approximately 43.1 million people, are living in poverty. For a country where people get rich for making a pet rock, that’s just inexcusable.

Poverty is a very serious, very unsexy issue. I could spend multiple posts whining and lamenting about the breadth of this problem. However, if you’ve been following this blog for any length of time, you know I find whining to be right up there with dry heaves, severe head trauma, and clown porn in terms of utterly unsexy wastes of time.

I’m not big on lamenting over problems. I like contemplating the solutions. The crazy creative side in me that comes up with sexy stories just loves to imagine bold new ways to solve overwhelming problems. Could there be such a solution to a problem as big as poverty? Well, there might be and it’s not just some crazy musing of an aspiring erotica/romance writer.

Ladies, gentlemen, and those of unspecified gender, I give you the Universal Basic Income. Like assless chaps, it’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s the idea that the state shouldn’t waste time trying to distribute resources based on need, requiring a bureaucracy that makes the DMV look like a goddamn day spa. Instead, it should just provide a bare minimum cash payment to every citizen, regardless of wealth or need.

If that sounds too simple, then don’t bother bracing yourself. For once, it really is that simple. If you’re a legal citizen, you get a monthly cash payment. It’s not enough to help you afford a golden toilet seat, but it is enough to keep you from starving to death.

If it sounds familiar, it should. The United States has had something similar, but it’s reserved for those lucky enough to live beyond a certain age. It’s called Social Security and, by and large, it’s one of the most popular social programs the United States has ever created. Yes, it’s even more popular than programs that study the economic structures of World of Warcraft.

A Universal Basic Income, or UBI for those who hate excessive syllables, just takes social security a step further. It ditches the whole age requirement, exotic math formulas, and bureaucracy components and just gives a simple, flat payment to everyone. It could come in the mail. It could be sent via PayPal. Even the government can’t screw that up too much.

If it sounds like the kind of radical idea that emerged from one of Bernie Sanders’ fever dreams, then settle down and drink some tea. This idea is actually older than 99 percent of all the nations that currently exist today. Like so many other crazy ideas, it emerged in different times under a different label.

Way back in 483 BC, a time when Bernie Sanders was still fighting for the rights of serfs and peasants, the ancient Athenians came up with something called a Citizens Dividend. It’s basically the same concept, saying that the state should pay its citizens for its use of communal property and various resources.

Sure, the Athenians didn’t adopt the idea and went back to warring with the Persians, but the concept didn’t end there. It re-emerged again through the works of an influential Founding Father by the name of Thomas Paine, a man Glen Beck goes out of his way to admire.

In his essay, “Agrarian Justice,” Paine argues for a citizens dividend wherein the wealth of some obscenely rich landowners would go to some of the poorer citizens to alleviate poverty. It wasn’t a universal income, but it was a method for raising the floor, so to speak, on the poorest citizens.

Again, it wasn’t adopted and for good reason. Rich landowners generally don’t like the idea of having the government take their money and give it to poor people. That has never sat well with super rich folk who need these poor people toiling in the fields so they can bathe in gold and concubines.

However, that might be changing because, unlike the days of Ancient Athens and Thomas Paine, technology is making it so we don’t need a massive underclass of peasants toiling in factories or in fields. Machines are rapidly becoming advanced to a point where even jobs such as trucking, mining, and ordering a Big Mac is destined to become automated.

Last year, the White House issued a report that stated that approximately 47 percent of the existing jobs will become automated in the next decade or so. That’s a lot of jobs that will leave a lot of people out of work with no money and nothing to do. That’s a recipe for disaster, as those enduring Greece’s recent economic troubles can attest.

The UBI could be a way to effectively bridge the gap between the era of making poor people work their asses off to prop up the rich and the era where machines do all the work so people can do more productive things with their time. That means more time for aspiring erotica/romance writers to write sexy stories. Isn’t that a future worth fighting for?

This isn’t just a matter of technology. This is basic economics. Machines don’t get tired, don’t take sick days, and until Skynet becomes active, they don’t unionize. Why else would Amazon be investing so heavily in using robots to operate its warehouses? At some point, you won’t be able to blame immigrants or minorities for taking your job. It’ll be a robot and you’re not going to win a fight with a robot.

So long as automation increases profits and efficiency, it’ll keep happening. Along the way, more and more people will struggle to find work. Sure, those who are well-educated and well-connected will find something to do, even if it means just getting grossly overpaid for speaking gigs. For everyone else, though, the options are limited.

The UBI could be the key to truly alleviating poverty on a mass scale while providing even more incentives to get machines to do the work that crushes one too many souls. It will require a rough transition. A UBI doesn’t exactly fit with the old “Protestant Work Ethic” that some people still go by, but like the Catholic Church’s position on masturbation, it might be one of those concepts we just shrug off.

A world where people don’t have to work to survive is a very different world, one that’s hard to imagine in an America that glorifies working yourself to death while those lazy Europeans enjoy things like paid vacation, maternity leave, and unlimited sick time. However, that image will eventually clash with trends in technology and our need to alleviate poverty to keep society from strangling itself.

This is a world I do hope to see in my lifetime. I may be old, gray, and shitting in bags by then, but I’d like to see what this world would inspire. Would not having to work as much or as hard mean more meaningful relationships? Would it mean more time for sex and intimacy? We can only hope. As always, though, an aspiring erotica/romance can come up with some pretty kinky fantasies.

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October 22, 2016 · 10:00 am

Our Shape-Shifting Future Love Lives

Has a man ever woken up one morning and thought to yourself, “I wish I could be a woman today?” It may sound like the musings of someone with serious gender identity issues, but I think it’s more common than we care to admit. Besides, it’s hardly the craziest thought that’s popped into my head in the morning. Depending on how much I’ve been drinking, I’ve been known to think some pretty twisted thoughts.

I’ll save those thoughts for another post. For this post, I’d like to discuss what I believe is the ultimate endgame for upgrading the human body. Those efforts are already underway. As futurist and author, Ray Kurzweil, discussed in his book, “The Singularity is Near,” we’re well on our way creating what he calls, “The Human Body 2.0.”

This body is to us what a Lamborghini is to a horse-drawn carriage. It’s a body that’ll give us strength, stamina, longevity, durability, and connectivity in ways that go far beyond where we put certain body parts. It has the potential to fundamentally transform how humans relate to one another socially, romantically, and sexually.

The romance and sex part is definitely of interest to me, if only because it gives me some twisted ideas for novels. Men and women in these bodies will definitely have a lot of options once they’ve enhanced themselves to a point where they can carry out acts of intimacy that make even Japanese anime porn look boring.

However, there is one other step to this trend if you can believe that and it has the potential to step up the craziness of our love lives even more if you can believe that. It’s something else that Kurzweil discusses in his book, but not in great detail because our caveman brains can’t process the implications.

Thankfully, I’ve twisted and warped my brain with a potent combination of sci-fi, comic books, and erotica for decades. I feel like I’m a bit more equipped to process these implications than most. Kurzweil calls this endgame, “The Human Body 3.0.” I call it the “Mystique Factor.”

What is the Mystique Factor? Well, once again, I need to revisit my love of comic books, in particularly X-men. I’ve talked about X-men in terms of love triangles that suck and romances that are actually equal. I’ll probably find ways to apply X-men to many more issues on this blog, but in this case, I think most will agree that the context here is just too perfect.

Specifically, I’d like to talk about Mystique. Who is Mystique? In the comics, she’s a mutant shape-shifter who specializes in deception, infiltration, and generally making life for the X-men a living hell. In the movies, she’s the character that required Jennifer Lawrence to run around naked. For that, straight men everywhere should have a special place in their heart for this character.

For the purposes of this discussion though, she’s more than just a perfectly malleable character whose sexiness is only limited by one’s perverse imagination. She’s essentially a manifestation of what The Human Body 3.0 will do for humanity, minus the blue skin and strategically-placed scales.

Mystique can shape-shift into any form she chooses. In the X-men comics and the movies, she with the same amount of effort that most people put into changing the channel on their TV. One minute she’s Wolverine. One minute she’s a middle-aged senator. One minute she’s an insanely sexy 20-something woman with blond hair, great legs, and a smile that can resurrect a dead puppy.

Yes, I’m a big Jennifer Lawrence fan, by the way. No, I’m not going to apologize for that. Let’s try to stay on topic here.

It goes beyond just tweaking her appearance in ways that plastic surgeons can only dream of. Mystique can basically swap genders on a whim. He default form is a woman, but she can take the form of a man. It’s never directly stated in the comics, most likely because the censors prefer to leave such dirty thoughts to internet message boards, but it’s pretty obvious. Mystique can turn into a man, grow a penis, and use it.

At one point, famed X-men writer, Chris Claremont, even planned to explore that concept by having Mystique father a child with a woman. Specifically, he wanted her to father Nightcrawler. In case you don’t know, this is Nightcrawler. He’s as devilishly charming as he looks.

Marvel vetoed that plans for reasons that I can only assume had to do with how confusing it would be to the collective balls of the entire X-men fanbase. In a series that already involves clones, aliens, and time travelers, this was deemed to be too much. Go figure.

Even if it was too much for Marvel in the late 20th century, who’s to say it won’t become a legitimate issue in the 21st or 22nd century? Transgender issues are already an emerging issue today in 2016. A century can bring a lot of crazy social change. Just ask any minority before the year 1950 for proof of that.

If we do indeed enhance our bodies to the point that Kurzweil predicts, then it’ll do more than just radically alter how we relate to one another romantically and sexually. It’ll completely upend the concept of gender as a whole.

For one, it would effectively render the whole transgender issue a moot point. If our bodies enhance to 3.0 status and we gain Mystique-caliber shape-shifting skills, then that means we can choose whichever gender we identify with. On top of that, the gender we choose will have fully functioning equipment, so to speak.

Individuals born as a men could turn into women to bear children. Those born as women can turn into men to never ever have to endure bearing children. That, or maybe they just want to know what a boner feels like. I imagine they’ll get bored with that real fast, but who’s to say they won’t have other reasons?

Technically speaking, there’s no reason this can’t happen with sufficiently advanced smart blood and nanotechnology. One of the big advancements with the Human Body 2.0 is that it utilizes nanotechnology and biotechnology to revamp, rewire, and reconfigure our physiology into something more robust and less prone to puking.

Gender, and all the equipment that comes with it, is just a manifestation of genetic information. Once our technology can manifest this information in the form of actual flesh, then all bets are off. We will all effectively become Mystique.

What will this mean for us? What will this mean for our sex lives, other than the fact we’ll be much better at recreating sex scenes from Game of Thrones? What will this mean for our love lives when everyone around us can turn into the gender we’re attracted to?

Whether we do it in real life or within a virtual world that’s indistinguishable from real life, it fundamentally changes our identity and how we see ourselves. How would men see women if they actually experience what it’s like to be a woman? How would women see men if they actually experienced what it’s like to be a man? It’s a step beyond empathy. It dealing with entirely different body parts and all the maintenance that comes with them.

A romance between two shape-shifters is a romance that requires a complete overall of basic courtship rituals. How do they decide which bodies to use? Do they have a template form? Do they have preferred gender roles? How do they decide which one of them has the kids if they want to have kids? You think couples argue about trivial shit now? Think about the arguments they’ll have when discussing which one of them gets to have a penis.

At the moment, I don’t think our caveman brains are equipped to handle being shape-shifters. Mystique has a handle on it because that’s what she’s always been. The comics and movies never depict her as being anything else. Sure, she tends to be a homicidal maniac who has been known to have babies with men who look like the devil, but it’s unreasonable to assume that’s typical.

It may very well be the case that humans in 2016 are only equipped to be one or, at most, two genders throughout our lifetimes. However, the humans equipped with 2.0 or 3.0 bodies be better situated. Both versions of bodies emphasize enhancing the capacity of the human brain, if only to handle all the major overhauls for the rest of the body. That brain will very likely not have the same flaws as our 1.0 caveman brains.

For the moment, I’m stuck with a 1.0 caveman brain and all its assorted flaws. That means I can’t comprehend entirely what a society of shape-shifters may be like between the sheets. That won’t stop me from trying though. If there is a way to tell an insanely sexy story about shape-shifters, then I’ll find it and turn it into a novel. That much you can be sure of.

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October 21, 2016 · 6:38 am

Fulfilling ALL Our Needs/Fantasies Through Human Enhancement

Everyone has their own list of crazy, erotic fantasies that they don’t have the time, energy, or resources to pursue. Unless you’re super rich, super famous, or able to handle super-potent drugs, you’ll only ever fulfill a fraction of your fantasies at most. Hell, many people go through their whole lives fulfilling exactly zero.

This is good to some extent for an erotica/romance writer like me. It means that there’s still a market for those whose ability to explore their erotic fantasies is limited to a book. I’m more than happy to fill that market with however many seamy stories I can conjure.

At the same time, however, it’s kind of tragic when you think about it. Countless people will go their whole lives having all these needs and desires, but they never get a chance to explore them. Sure, it won’t stop them from living happy, content lives, but how much richer would those lives be if they could explore those fantasies?

Well, just as we’ve seen with the creation of fire, electricity, and internet porn, technology may one day make that possible. It’s already starting to happen. Virtual reality headsets are finally becoming mainstream.

You can probably assume someone is already planning to use it for porn. Pretty much every new technology that emerged is applied to sex in some ways. It’s a basic rule of technological progress. If it can be applied to sex, then it will be applied to sex. No exceptions.

This is just the beginning though. Just watching pretty pictures in a VR headset isn’t enough. We’re human beings. We actually want to do all this crazy sexy shit we come up with. There’s only so much we can do on our own. No amount of towels and lube can fulfill the breadth of our desires.

The advent of something like smart blood will help. I already discussed the extremely sexy possibilities in a previous post. The advent of biotechnology will usher in a new era of enhancement.

We’ll be stronger, smarter, and sexier. We’ll be able to live longer lives and stay strong, smart, and sexy along the way. We may get to a point where nobody looks older than 35. Every man will be as strong and endowed as Hugh Jackman. Every woman will be as beautiful and shapely as Kate Hudson. It’ll be a crazy sexy world and I hope I live long enough to see it for reasons that should be obvious.

As appealing and sexy as that future is, it’s still not the ultimate endgame for human enhancement. Sure, it’ll be a lot easier once everyone has smart blood in their system and can hump like Wilt Chamberlin on meth, but there are other forms of enhancement that go even farther if you can believe that. With those enhancements, our ability to explore our needs and desires literally takes on a whole new shape.

What sort of enhancements am I talking about? Well, to answer that, I need to preface this by saying a good chunk of this discussion, as well as those in previous blog posts, were inspired by a book I’ve been reading. It’s called “The Singularity Is Near” by a brilliant futurist, who also happens to be an engineer at Google, named Ray Kurzweil.

It’s a dense, technical book full of information, history, and speculation. If you really want to stretch your mind, and even strain it in some areas, I highly recommend this book. It’ll get you excited/horny about the future in ways you never imagined.

The primary message in this book is fairly straightforward. Kurzweil argues that the current pace of technology is accelerating at a rate that will eventually reach a point where we begin to transcend our own biology. The caveman logic that I’m so fond of referring to on this blog will become a moot point.

There’s a lot to unpack in this book and since I don’t like giving spoilers, I’ll focus on the sexy parts. That’s why people come to this blog. Discussions about human enhancement and futurism isn’t fun unless it’s sexy as well. Well don’t worry. This is going to get sexy real fast.

One of my favorite chapters in this book involves something Kurzweil called “The Human Body 2.0.” In it, he basically describes how we’ll use advances in biotechnology, nanotechnology, and robotics to give the human body a much-needed overhaul. Forget just slapping on makeup, baby oil, and silicone tits. Kurzweil doesn’t just want to enhance our bodies. He wants to rebuild them from the ground up.

It’s not as creepy as it sounds. Recently, I ate this new flavor of cake mix ice cream and it turned my stomach into tire fire on a toxic waste dump. That experience alone, a body that can’t handle a certain flavor of ice cream, convinced me that the human body is due for an overhaul.

Kurzweil goes into great detail about how this 2.0 version of our bodies work. He even explores it on his website. Granted, he gets a little technical at times, but even he acknowledges there are some sexy implications.

This new body doesn’t just have better organs, stronger muscles, and less odor. It basically requires a whole new set of instruction manuals. It has so many upgrades and improvements that I can’t list them all in a single post, but here are just a few that should get you excited/horny:

  • A system of nanobots in place of traditional blood and body fluids, which are programmable and have a measure of intelligence
  • Biotech and cybernetic implants that improve/expand senses
  • Bioengineered skin that is stronger, more durable, and able to process more tactile information
  • Organs that are part biological, part mechanical, and completely interchangable
  • Enhanced brain and nervous system that integrates biotechnical and cybernetic systems to improve, enhance, expand function
  • Connectivity between brain and nervous system to external systems, including computers, AIs, and other brains

Again, this is just a fraction of the functions that these augmented bodies will have. They’ll go way beyond just keeping us free of disease and ensuring we’re all as fit as Olympian athletes. Hell, these bodies will ensure we can beat up every Olympian athlete over the past 100 years without breaking a sweat.

That’s besides the point though. I know what everyone really wants to know about. How will this impact our sex lives? Smart blood will already give us the ability to hump freely without much concern for any nasty side-effects or visits from Maury Povich. What more do we need?

Well, remember the VR shit I mentioned earlier? That’s where these enhanced bodies will be at their sexiest. How will they do this? Two words: The Matrix.

No, I’m not talking about the mind-bending 90s movie or the shitty sequels that came after it. I’m talking about the concept it explored, creating a virtual world so real that it’s completely indistinguishable, as far as our brains are concerned.

Kurzweil discusses this idea extensively in his book, noting the rate at which graphics and simulations are becoming more lifelike. Has anyone here seen the graphics of the PlayStation 4? I don’t think anyone would doubt that at this point.

As this trend continues, it’s going to get to a point where the graphics are so real that our caveman brains really can’t tell the difference. However, our enhanced 2.0 brains will be able to do us one better. It won’t just be able to process these virtual worlds. It’ll allow us to control them.

Kurzweil called it a form of “experience beaming.” I prefer to call it the ultimate fantasy, sexual or otherwise. Once computing power gets to this point, and we’re getting closer every year, we’ll be able to conjure any virtual world we want.

I don’t think it takes a dirty imagination to see the sexual implications of this technology. Now, we don’t even need a partner. We don’t even need to leave our couch. We can just plug in, load up a simulation that involves a three-way between Marilyn Munroe and Cleopatra, and it’ll feel so real that we can’t tell the difference.

This isn’t just the ultimate wet dream for some though. Kurzweil also says that these virtual worlds could be shared. There could be an entire virtual nightclub where people just project their conscious minds into it, hook up with digital versions of other people, and get busy with them in a controlled, malleable world that feels as real as this one.

For couples, it means they could conjure their ultimate fantasies together. Would that make their love stronger? Would that make their sex better? I certainly think so. We all have awesome experiences as individuals. It’s natural that we’d seek to share them with others. That’s something “the human body 2.0” makes easier. If it’s as easy as becoming Facebook friends, people will do it. It’s practically inevitable.

This all sounds wonderfully utopian, but make no mistake. There will be issues with our new bodies and these virtual worlds. There will be serious issues that’ll probably make us unenhanced folks in 2016 cringe.

Who’s to say these virtual worlds are as sexy or wholesome as low-budget softcore porno movie on Cinemax? Why couldn’t they also involve torture, mutilation, and exploitation so horrific that I can’t put it into words, nor do I want to? In a digital world, the laws of physics don’t apply. There’s literally nothing keeping people from doing this crazy shit. Will that be good for society? Will we be able to handle it?

Kurzweil doesn’t shy away from these issues. He acknowledges them, but says the benefits outweigh the costs. I think he’s right. Opposing these advancements is like nuking the internet to keep the libraries in business. It’s throwing away too much good because of a little bad.

When this day comes and we have the bodies that can enter these worlds, it’ll change a lot of things. Chances our, erotica/romance writers like me will be out of business or obsolete. That time hasn’t come yet though. That means I’ll just have to make the most of my desire to tell sexy, romantic stories. Then, when the time comes to enter a virtual world where we can go skinny dipping with Starfire and Wonder Woman, I’ll be first in line.

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October 19, 2016 · 6:58 am

Biotechnology, Symbiotes, Smart Blood, And Becoming James Bond

When I came up with the concept for my book, “Skin Deep,” I didn’t just want to conjure some overly magical force to explore the themes of beauty, sex, and decadence. I wanted it to have some basis in reality. I intend to leave all the magical stuff to Disney and those who do porn parodies of Disney.

I’ve always been interested in futuristic technology. Having grown up on a steady diet of Star Wars and superhero comics like X-men, I’m often intrigued by the sci-fi, futuristic elements of these worlds and yes, that intrigue extends to sex and romance. I don’t intend to be coy about that, especially for the subject of this post.

Some of that comic book influence found its way into “Skin Deep.” In that story, the mechanism that the main character, Ben Prescott, uses to become attractive is called Project Venus. Without getting to technical, which tends to kill the mood to anyone who doesn’t have a very specific Star Trek fetish, this project basically consisted of this high-tech biotech goop. It’s not as crude as it sound. It was also inspired by these things.

For those of you who don’t follow comic books, monster movies, or tentacle porn, those are what Marvel calls symbiotes. They’re conscious alien organisms that consist primarily of blackish red goop. Their primary function is similar to that of a parasite. They find a host, be it Spider-Man or someone who hates him, and bond with it.

What makes them so intriguing (and dangerous) is that don’t stop at bonding with a host. They actually re-shape, heal, and (most importantly for the topic of this conversion) improve it. Sure, it tends to make the host crazy, homicidal, and inclined to murder Spider-Man, but is that really as bad as the side-effects from some modern drugs? Look up anal seepage and tell me you wouldn’t risk it.

The stories in the comics tend to focus on the murderous side of symbiotes, but they do sometimes touch on the benefits. One Spider-Man character in particular, Flash Thompson, got the most of those benefits.

At one point, he was badly wounded while in the military, losing two limbs in the process. Then, a symbiote came along and healed him. When there are veterans in the real world facing problems like that, who wouldn’t risk a treatment involving an alien organism?

In “Skin Deep,” Ben Prescott was in a similar situation. He endured a terrible accident that left him badly scarred and in chronic pain. Both he and his parents were desperate and Warren Irvine, the main “antagonist” (I use quotation marks because I don’t like ascribing that role to him) of the story, takes advantage of that desperation.

The treatment in “Skin Deep” is not at all like the alien symbiotes in Marvel comics. In some respects, it’s a bit more realistic. It doesn’t have consciousness. It doesn’t function as a parasite. It doesn’t make those who use it want to murder masked vigilantes. Project Venus was a lot more pragmatic. It focused entirely on healing and improving the host.

This is, in essence, the primary goal of biotechnology as it applies to the human body. We know all too well just how flawed the human body is. A great deal of those flaws do more than just make us sore at the end of the day. They make us hate each other for petty reasons, hinder our ability to understand one another, and (as I like to explore as an erotica/romance writer) hinder our ability to love and be intimate with one another.

Biotechnology and the promise it offers may very well be the key to fixing those flaws. In fact, it’ll do more than just fix them. It’ll enhance what’s already there. I’m not just talking about the “super penis” that Deadpool joked about in his movie. I’m talking enhancements that go much further.

I intend to talk about the extent of those enhancements in other posts. For this one, however, I want to focus specifically on the mechanisms. I want to explore the nuts and bolts of how a real life symbiote/Project Venus would work, how it would affect us, and how it would impact society.

Make no mistake. There will be an impact. Once we achieve the technology to enhance, tweak, or repair the flaws in human biology, then the possibilities get pretty damn big. They’ll be much bigger than anything an aspiring erotica/romance writer can conjure. I can only explore and appreciate the sexy parts so that’s what I’ll focus on.

First, let’s focus on the mundane. How will technology like this work? As is often the case, movies and comics do try to get a leg up on these breakthroughs. We saw it in Star Trek with cell phones. The same applies to biotechnology. In the case, the latest James Bond movie, Spectre, gave us some insight.

In that movie, James Bond is injected with an advanced biotech fluid called “smart blood.” It’s not as sexy as it sounds, but it’s somewhat similar to Project Venus in “Skin Deep.” In that movie, the smart blood was designed only to track and monitor James Bond’s vitals. That’s a simple, but pragmatic use for such advanced technology.

Imagine a more advanced form of smart blood that goes even further. Imagine that it can do more than just monitor and track. Imagine it healing diseases (let’s face it, James Bond probably has more than a few), improving stamina (he runs from explosions all the times so that’s vital), and enhancing organ function (although he may not need it).

Now imagine this kind of smart blood being available to all men. Imagine all men with this blood in their system having the same physical abilities as James Bond. I’ll give the women reading this blog a moment to fantasize about that world. Take all the time you need.

This “smart blood” isn’t entirely science fiction. It doesn’t exist yet, but there’s nothing in the laws of physics that says it’s impossible. More importantly, there’s a huge economic incentive to creating something that’ll turn men into James Bond. The men’s grooming industry alone is an estimated $21 billion in 2016. Whoever perfects smart blood is bound to become rich enough to fund its own Spectre organization if they want.

The same incentives are there for women. In fact, they’re even more lucrative. Hair care sales alone for the United States topped $11.6 billion in 2014. Imagine a form of smart blood that could change the color of a woman’s hair as easily as she changes the desktop art on her computer. Just as every man could look like James Bond, every woman can look like Jennifer Lawrence. I’ll give men a moment to fantasize about that world. Again, take all the time you need.

This is the world that “Skin Deep” explored. Are we even ready for that world? It’s hard to say. Were we ready for the internet? Were we ready for vaccines? Were we ready for penicillin? These are questions that don’t have answers because they didn’t have to be answered. The same applies to smart blood.

Setting those questions aside for a moment, let’s ask a more relevant question. What exactly will perfected smart blood do? Well, it could definitely start off as a means of tracking and monitoring people, just as we saw with James Bond in Spectre. However, new functions would emerge, just as they did with smartphones so let’s follow that model.

In the same smartphones took on many more functions, smart blood could do the same. It could consist of trillions of programmable artificial cells. Since these cells have a measure of intelligence, we could communicate with these cells the same way Bluetooth devices communicate with each other.

This communication means we can equip these cells to fight off every form of infectious diseases, including the very unsexy kind that James Bond probably gets from humping too many bond girls. Viruses and bacteria thrive because they can adapt to whatever biology we throw at them, but in the same way trees can’t adapt to chainsaws, these diseases will not be able to adapt to smart blood.

That means no more infectious diseases. That means no more STIs. That alone will have a huge impact on society, both in terms of public health and how we approach sex. I already posed this question on my blog before. It’s not an unreasonable question to ask because smart blood may very well make this possible.

Using this same communication, we could instruct our smart blood to fix damaged tissues, repair organs, and improve their function. This means kidneys are more efficient, livers are more efficient, and muscles are more efficient. We become stronger, healthier, and can drink a crate of whiskey without puking. Those are all amazing benefits in and of themselves.

Yes, by the way, those enhancements extent to our sex organs. Smart blood could improve the function of a man’s penis and a woman’s vagina to a level that even porn stars would envy. Smart blood could ensure a man never needs Viagra again. Smart blood could ensure a woman always has multiple orgasms. It can even ensure it’s not over after two minutes. What kind of sex lives would we have if that were the case?

You done contemplating all those fantasies about being able to fuck like Ron Jeremy or Jenna Jameson? Well, it gets even better! Improving the inner workings of the body is just one side of the coin. The outer workings benefit just as much, as “Skin Deep” explored.

With smart blood in your body, you can program it to attack wrinkles, moles, and blemishes without the need for botox or surgery. Our skin can look as youthful at 91 as it did at 21. A woman’s breasts will never sag. A man’s scrotum will never sag. If smart blood is truly perfected, we’ll basically stop aging in our mid-30s. Sure, that may really undermine the MILF porn industry, but I’d say that’s a sacrifice worth taking.

For women, specifically, the benefits go even further than better boobs, if you can believe that. With smart blood, issues over birth control and contraception are basically over. If smart blood can improve the function of your sex organs, then it can also manage them just as well. That means every woman will have perfect control over her fertility.

That kind of control is unprecedented. Current birth control methods are effective, but flawed. With smart blood, a woman can literally decide the exact moment to get pregnant. Before she has a romp with her future baby daddy, she just programs her smart blood to prime her ovaries. This way, she knows who the daddy is. Maury Povich will be out of business.

This is what smart blood can do. This is what we may be facing as a society at some point in our future. Personally, I hope I live long enough to see it because it’ll be a very different society compared to the one we have now. However, even that society is not the ultimate endgame for fixing the human body. What do I mean by that? Well, that’s a topic for another post.

Until then, I’ll leave readers to contemplate this society. It’s important to think about because it will likely be the topic of another book I write down the line. Think about the society we’ll have with smart blood at our disposal. What kind of conflicts will there be in that society? How sexy will this society be? I can’t answer those questions, but I sure as hell hope to explore them.

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October 6, 2016 · 8:17 am

Fixing The Flawed Wiring Of The Human Brain

I talk a lot about the flaws, failures, and absurdities of the human species on this blog. It’s not by accident, I assure you. It’s not entirely by choice either. I’d love to be able to attribute shortcomings in the human condition to evil spirits, curses, and watered down beer. It’s just a matter of inescapable pragmatism that I constantly circle back to the flaws in our collective human brains.

These flaws extend to issues like unhealthy attitudes towards sexuality, religiously-motivated self-torture, and irrational understandings of gender differences. There’s no escaping it. We, as a species, are a buggy beta version at best and a 10-year-old, malware infested laptop running Windows Vista at worst. The fact we’ve been able to survive this long is a testament to our adaptability and/or dumb luck.

There are a lot of complexities and intricacies to these flaws in the human condition. I’ve touched on many to date on this blog and I intend to explore many more, both here and within my own books. Some may argue that these flaws are part of what make us human. That may be true to some extent, but I also believe that we’re way overdue for an upgrade.

The problem with these upgrades is that the flaws in the human condition are closely tied to the flaws of nature as a whole. Nature, by its own overly-pragmatic accord, is a blunt instrument that is stuck using painfully slow processes to fix and tweak its creations.

Natural selection, adaptation, genetic variation are all painfully slow. They’re akin to bunch of blind rats trying to direct traffic down a busy city street during rush hour. This means they can’t be precise, calculated, or measured. They basically have to build a house using nothing but a baseball bat and globs of wet cement. It is possible, but it’s not going to be very refined.

This clunky, crude process is a big reason why humans are at the mercy of the caveman logic that’s hardwired into our brains. Human civilization progresses quickly and chaotically, but our collective brains are still stuck on the same settings they were when we were hunting sabretooth tigers in the African savanna and shitting in gopher holes.

These are some pretty serious flaws, but the human species, like other species that manage to survive this long, can still adapt because of and/or in spite of these flaws. The human brain itself can do this to a significant degree thanks to brain plasticity, the wonderfully complex process that allows the brain to adapt and tweak its wiring in accord with new experiences.

While this plasticity is somewhat limited, it does provide a mechanism for tweaking our faulty wiring when it gets too faulty. This mechanism can be used to treat issues like addiction, depression, or learning disabilities like dyslexia. There’s a whole cottage industry of sorts, complete with accomplished experts and outright frauds, for rewiring the brain in this way.

About a year ago, Big Think did an article that focused on methods for rewiring the brain to improve performance in their careers. They cited a study where people who actively practiced a particular skill on a piano affected their brains in a similar way as people who just thought about practicing that same skill.

It once again reveals the crudeness of our biology. Our brains don’t always know the difference between action and thought. Both will help tweak the wiring to some degree. Crude or not, it does show the power of this mechanism. It’s easy to exploit if you understand and appreciate the clunky processes it uses.

We can use these new findings about the brain to help us become better performers at work, more successful in our business dealings, and more fulfilled professionally. By consistently training our thoughts, like those imaginary piano players, we can expand the number of branches and synaptic connections in our hippocampus, potentially leading to an increased ability to retain new information and adapt to new situations.

This alone should give some people hope that they can wire themselves to be more efficient in their jobs, their personal lives, and everything in between. Just understand that thoughts and actions can have a similar impact. Thoughts will inspire your actions and vice versa.

So when a parent tells their kid, “If you think it’s going to be awful, then it will be!” they’re not bullshitting them. They are actually telling the truth and they have scientific studies to back it up. That’ll be handy to have for when I have kids one day.

It’s even possible to push this process even further. In his book, “How To Fail At Everything And Still Win Big,” Scott Adams talks about using self-hypnosis to re-wire your thoughts into a more successful framework. He even provides actual instructions for those seeking to get in shape, eat a healthier diet, and deal with idiots at work. It’s a great book that I highly recommend. Given the amount of idiots in this world, this kind of advice is invaluable.

While having a faulty brain that can be hacked is nice to some degree, there are limits. Human beings are complex creatures who are at the mercy of equally complex and exceedingly clunky natural processes. Sure, we have Einstein, Mozart, and Shakespeare, but we also have Stalin, Dahlmer, and Bieber as well. The sheer range and breadth of that margin of error is a tad disconcerting.

This is the point where I close my eyes, ignore the doomsayers, and speculate on the progress mankind will make with its technology one day. We have a distinct advantage compared to the gorillas, elephants, and raccoons of this world. We can do more than just gather food from trees and trash cans. We can build shit. We can build some pretty amazing shit. Hell, we built this.

Our ability to build awesome shit gives me some hope that one day mankind will find a more comprehensive way to fixing the egregious flaws of our biology. It’s not enough to just train our minds and bodies to be better. We need to build shit that’ll make us better beyond anything that biology will allow.

Nature can create the grand canyon. We can make Mount Rushmore, the Hoover Dam, and spray cheese in a can. These are things that can’t happen naturally and, in some cases, are impossible even in ideal conditions. At a certain level of complexity, there needs to be an intelligence force armed with more than a blunt instrument to shape the world around it.

When it comes to the wiring of the human brain, the biggest promise at the moment is nanobots. These are little tiny robots that we can put in our bodies or in anything else and have them perform processes that are impossible to achieve with blunt natural forces.

These processes include going into our brains and physically rewiring the parts that are making us dumb, dispassionate, and depressed. Since these things would have a measure of intelligence, they could do more than just slap duct tape on the structure. They could break it down and rebuild it with shiny new fixtures, polished marble, un-rusted nails.

What does that mean for us? What does that mean for society? How will men and women function in a society where our brains are not at the mercy of the cavemen logic that has guided, for better and for worse, since our hunter/gatherer days?

It’s very difficult to say since I, like the rest of the human race, am limited by my caveman brain. However, it is an idea that I’ve toyed with to some extent in my books. One of my first novels, “Skin Deep,” explored the idea of using technology to reconfigure the human body, which vastly changed how certain characters interacted with one another.

I’ve been contemplating ways to explore this idea in other books. I find myself imaging a future where the brains of men and women are bereft of the flaws and limitations of our current condition. I don’t see us all being these mindless drones in such a future. I actually see us becoming more emotional, more connected, and more passionate than we would be otherwise.

Since this is the internet and pretty much any bit of technology will be applied to sex, I also find myself thinking about how this would affect intimacy. What would it be like for two people, be they gay or straight, to have sex when their brains have been enhanced to such a degree that they don’t have any biological limitations?

What sort of emotions would we feel? What sort of thoughts would we think? What sort of orgasms would we have? These are the kinds of kinky ideas that keep me up at night, among other things. They’re ideas worth contemplating because this future may manifest in some form or another down the line.

According to futurist, Ray Kurzweil, nanorobotic technology will advance to a point where it can re-wire our brains at some time in the 2030s. He claims:

We’re going to expand the brain’s neocortex and become more godlike.

That’s a pretty bold claim, but one that only seems bold from our limited, caveman brains. I’m sure a mouse looks at a hot pocket or a cup of Ramen noodles and struggles to comprehend that as well.

Unlike a rat, we can speculate and tell stories about the lives of those who live in a world where their brains are functioning beyond that of mere cavemen. Will these brains be absent of the flaws, taboos, and hindrances that hinder our ability to be intimate with one another? It’s amazing to contemplate and could make for a damn good, damn sexy story.

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