Tag Archives: technology

November 14, 2016 · 6:35 am

Thought Experiment On Democracy (The Non-Boring Kind)

I imagine that after last week, everybody is sick of politics, elections, and democracy in general. Believe me, I feel your pain. I almost long for the days when the news dedicated most of its time to what was going on with Kim Kardashian’s ass. Now that the 2016 Election is over, we can all stop fighting the urge to throw a brick at our TVs.

Now don’t worry. This post is not going to be about politics, at least not in the Anderson Cooper type tradition. I remain committed to keeping this blog relatively free of overly political bullshit that would otherwise kill the sexy mood I’m trying to create with my novels. While there are some political undertones in this topic, it’s not the kind that make most people want to beat each other to death with a sack of hammers.

This post is about something a bit more thought-provoking, at least that’s my hope. It’s another thought experiment. I’ve posed them before on this blog on other topics like disease and attitudes towards jealousy. I think it’s helpful to get people thinking about a difficult issue and this is as difficult as it comes these days.

More than anything else, the 2016 election in America highlights the flaws in democracy. It is prone to the irrational, irresponsible whims of our caveman brains. Those brains are wired in a way where we don’t give enough of a damn about what is actually true and instead go with how something makes us feel.

This is why demagogues, hypocrites, liars, cheaters, and reality TV stars can run for office and actually win. These people are smart enough to understand that the mass public doesn’t care if you’re a liar or a cheat. If you tell them what they want to hear and make them feel good, they’ll vote for you.

This is exactly why even the great Winston Churchill was critical of democracy. He said it himself.

Democracy, as beautiful a thing it is, has room for improvement. It’s definitely an improvement on the Game of Thrones style governments of the past where kings could routinely spit on peasants and shoot them for sport if he wanted. There are still tyrants in this world, but their governments tend to fail miserably in the long run. Just look at North Korea.

So rather than just throw democracy out entirely, why not give it some added polish? Why not look for ways to make it better? The Founding Fathers of America did that. People often forget that the first form of government they chose wasn’t the Constitution. It was the Articles of Confederation, which was so flawed that it didn’t even last a decade.

With that in mind, let’s channel the wisdom of the Founding Fathers and look at our current forms of government, not just in America, but all around the world. How do we improve it? How do we make it better, more efficient, and more just?

It’s a hard (if not impossible) question to answer. Many have tried though. Listverse even compiled a list of bizarre, hypothetical governments that have never been tried, but do seek to make improvements over the current system.

Some aren’t all that radical. The concept of the Perfect Commonwealth or Jeffersonian Democracy all have concepts that are fairly well-rooted in the real world, if not historically, then most certainly practically. Then, you get much weirder concepts like Liquid Democracy or Technocracy, which require more imagination than bureaucracy.

These are all interesting/strange/downright crazy ideas. So for the sake of this argument, let’s keep them all in mind as we conjure a better form of democracy. Let your imagination go a little crazy and conjure a government that might actually work in the real world.

Having done this thought experiment already in my own slightly crazy brain, I have an idea I’d like to share. It’s not something James Madison would probably approve of, but here it is. I even have a name for it.

Negative Democracy

Now don’t let the name scare you. I’m not talking about a democracy that will allow the King Joffrey’s of the world to reign supreme. I’m talking about a form of democracy that takes the current flaws, turns them upside down, and keeps them there so that the current corruption doesn’t get a chance to return.

So how does it work? Well, it goes like this:

  • There are three tiers: local, state, and federal
  • The local tier elects its leaders by popular vote
  • The state tier elects its governor by popular vote, but legislators are appointed by the local-elected officials
  • The federal tier elects its congressperson by popular vote, but the president/prime mister is appointed by a 2/3 vote by state governors
  • Every year on the first Saturday of November, the people can vote to remove any appointed and/or elected representative at any level if the vote is greater than 2/3 of the population

I know it’s basic, crude, and simplistic. I’m no Thomas Jefferson. That much, I admit. However, I make these points to highlight one key component of Negative Democracy that makes it unique.

It doesn’t focus as much on electing officials to public office as it does on removing those who don’t do a good job. Here in America, we do way too good a job at electing incompetent officials. The Constitution says a lot about how to elect these officials. It says far less about removing them.

That’s the key, Negative Democracy. You remove the incompetent, corrupt elements of government in hopes of allowing better, more qualified officials to fill the void. At some point, somebody who isn’t a total screw-up should come to power. Even politics is subject to the law of averages.

The second key is that democratic elections be held on the local and state level for the most part. Why is this important? That’s because people tend to be more in tuned with the officials in their neighborhood. They’re more likely to interact with the mayor or city council than they are a senator or a President.

As such, those local officials are closer to their constituents. They’re more likely to know them personally and when you know someone personally, you’re less likely to screw them over. It’s one thing for total strangers to hate you. For your own community to turn against you is pretty powerful. Only a select few have the ego and cruelty to try a terrible stunt like that.

Under this system, most of the federal officials are appointed and don’t have to run an election campaign. They can still be voted out of office every year if their constituents don’t like what they’re doing, but the key is they don’t run expensive, dishonest campaigns in the first place. They get appointed, they go to the capital, and they do their job.

If you think that might be prone to corruption, I don’t doubt there’s a chance. There’s a chance for corruption in every form of human-centered governance. It’s just a matter of managing the incentives to cheat as much as possible.

There’s a reason why the Judicial Branch of government in America gets less press and is often seen as the most effective branch. It gets to exercise Judicial Independence. Judges in this branch don’t have to run for office and they don’t need to be re-elected. They can, in principle, lose their jobs if they do something egregious, but those instances are rare.

So much time, energy, and money is spent on just electing officials. In a large, diverse country like the United States, that’s wholly impractical. For every country and society, the emphasis of all government should be to maintain rule of law, protect people from harm, and manage public services. It’s a difficult, if not impossible task to accomplish, but it’s too important not to be improved upon.

With this in mind, I challenge others to conduct this same thought experiment. What sort of new government system would you come up with? What would you call it? How would it work? Share it! During these trouble timed, these are definitely ideas worth exploring.

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November 7, 2016 · 7:03 am

Relax! The World Is Getting Better.

Let’s not lie to ourselves. For those of us in America, the 2016 Presidential Election feels like a prolonged prostate exam without lube and delivered by Andre the Giant while wearing a boxing glove. In my adult life (and my non-adult life, for that matter), I’ve never become so disillusioned by democracy. The comic book fan in me wants to elect Dr. Doom over any of these choices.

For the non-comic book fans out there, Dr. Doom is seen as one of the most devious villains in the history of comics. He is the alpha and omega of all that is evil. I know this. I understand this. I have no problem saying that I’d still vote for him over the two deep-fried turds we have running this year.

It’s a sad, solemn state for this country that I love. I know we’re a walking joke of hillbillies, rednecks, hippies, and PETA supporters that the rest of the world can easily make fun of, but I really do love this country. I really love being an American. Where else can a comic book fan who writes erotica/romance in his spare time feel at home?

I’m not going to lie though. I’m scared about the election tomorrow. We, the citizens of the United States of America, may vote to give nuclear weapons to someone who may just use them because someone made a bad joke on Twitter. That is fucking terrifying.

While fear is going to make me wake up early to cast my vote, I do try to maintain at least some sense of optimism. I emphasize the word try because that’s pretty damn hard these days. We live in an era where anyone can sit down on a bench, take out their phone, and search for every form of obscure fetish porn. If you can find fetish porn, then you can find some news story that says the world is going to hell.

Just look at some of the news stories that come out of Florida. They’ll make you wish you were born retarded lizard.

As a result of all this fear, frustration, and an ability to find anything on the internet that makes you horny, it’s easy to overlook the fact that things are actually getting better for the human race.

Seriously, it’s true. Things are getting better. People today are better of than their ancestors were 100 years ago. Hell, people are better off today than our ancestors were 25 years ago. Today, people have high speed internet, Netflix, and free porn. That’s objectively better than any era in history by default.

It’s not just our access to movies and porn that make life better though. Despite what certain political parties say at their convention, things are getting better in terms of crime, violence, and overall deviance. I know that’s hard to believe when Fox News shows a new story about minority protesters beating up babies every other hour, but the actual facts (an alien concept to most media these days) don’t bear that out.

Reason.com, a great site for keeping things in perspective if you can sift through the pro-marijuana articles written by stoners, did a great article a few years ago at just how much progress we’ve made as a species. Sure, there’s still poverty. There’s still violence. There’s still reality TV shows that won’t die. Overall though, it’s still pretty damn good.

For most of human history, kids didn’t live long enough to see their second birthday. A good chunk of the female population died in childbirth. The best modern medicine you could get involved leaches and herbs that tasted like shit. Men either toiled in fields or died on whatever battlefields the kings of the day decreed. It was not a pleasant life and not just because it had poor wi-fi.

Don’t believe me? Well, check out the facts for yourself. A site called HumanProgress.org compiles and tracks the data surrounding what we associate with human progress. You’ll find information on things like violence, infant morality, LGBT rights, hate crimes, and racial issues. You’ll also find information on economic issues (good for the insomniacs out there) that put a dollar sign on these issues.

That’s not to say that all trends are going in a positive direction. As I said before, humanity has room for improvement. We still kill each other over what we think happens when we die and fail to see the irony. There are things we do have to work on, but actual data should give us reasons to be hopeful.

For instance, here’s a chart that shows trends in violent crime since the early 1970s. It’s not going up. It’s going down. We’re not turning into a society right out of an old NWA music video. We’re getting a lot better at not shooting and raping each other. That’s a good thing in my book, or anyone’s book for that matter.

 

Then, there’s this little tidbit about children. That’s another issue that should be completely apolitical. We love children and we don’t like seeing them die because of preventable causes. For most of human history, countless children did die because of diseases, disasters, and circumstances we couldn’t do shit about. Well, things have changed. We’ve gotten better at saving the lives of children. In fact, we’ve gotten a lot better.

It’s not just crime and health that are improving either. These may be objective statistics, but if anyone has learned anything about the 2016 Presidential Election, it’s that nobody gives a half-fart about statistics and facts. We go with our feelings, no matter how wrong or misguided they may be.

That can be pretty troubling, the idea that we humans can’t accept the fact that the world is getting better and are doomed to always dread the future. While it is troubling, it’s also inaccurate because things are getting better in the most subjective sense possible: happiness.

That’s right. People are actually happier today than they were 25 years ago. Sure, happiness is one of the most subjective feelings in the world, right up there with tastes in food, movies, and sexual fetishes. It’s still one of the most valuable measures we have towards gauging the state of the human condition and it is getting better.

We’re happier. We’re healthier. We’re more equal, free, and prosperous than we’ve ever been at any time in human history. That, by any measure, is something to be thankful for. It’s something to celebrate.

Now it’s entirely possible that the results of the election tomorrow could reverse all these trends, but baring a nuclear war, that’s very unlikely. This is where caveman logic really works in our favor. When we humans find something that works for us, we tend to stick to it and do everything we can to keep doing it. Again, there’s room for improvement, but we’re making progress.

We’re kicking ass as a civilization. We’re becoming more advanced, more tolerant, and more prosperous. We should all celebrate that, election or not. I’ll celebrate with a glass of whiskey and some of my favorite romance/erotica novels. I encourage everyone to celebrate as well.

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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 20, 2016 · 6:56 am

A Day In The Life Of An Enhanced Human

When I was 12-years-old, I was playing baseball with my friends, as any ordinary kid with limited athletic ability would. Then, on a total fluke play, I tried to pick up a ground ball with my bare hand so I could make the play at first. In the process, I jammed my middle finger badly.

This is a fairly normal injury that everybody gets at some point in their lives. It doesn’t kill you. It doesn’t even make you wish you were dead. It just hurts like a bitch and takes forever to heal. That simple, fluke injury ruined my week.

For six days, I couldn’t bend that finger so it looked like I was flipping everybody off. Something as simple as brushing my teeth became a test in pain tolerance and dexterity. I can’t help but think if I found this little injury so annoying, then I wouldn’t have lasted five seconds in the hunter/gatherer days of my ancestors. I’d have been the first to get eaten by a bear because I couldn’t stop complaining about a jammed finger.

Why do I bring this story up? Well, it highlights an important, not to mention inescapable, detail about the human condition. Our bodies, as wonderful and sexy they may be, are woefully inefficient. A good chunk of our lives and a major chunk of our civilization is built around mitigating these inefficacies. Why else would the pharmaceutical industry be a $1.06 trillion (that’s not a misprint) market?

There’s no doubt that the human body has its limits and we’re trying damn hard to manage them. However, there may come a day, and it may come sooner than you think, where we’ll do more than just manage those limits. We’ll subvert them.

That’s right. We’ll become the enhanced humans I often read about in my comic books. Men can become as fit as Captain America. Women can become as fit as Wonder Woman. Actually, scratch that. I’d rather the women become as fit as Starfire, for reasons I’ve already laid out on this blog. If you need a reminder, this should help.

It’s an appealing thought, in more ways than one. It’s a damn sexy thought as well, in far too many ways to list. It may seem so distant when the Centers for Disease Control shows that 591,699 people died from cancer and 55,227 died from influenza in 2015 alone. However, there is reason to believe that such a fanciful, sexy thought may become a reality.

I already revealed one possibility, courtesy of the 2015 James Bond movie, Spectre. In the movie, it’s called smart blood. In our world, it’s the alpha and omega of biotechnology. It’s Ryan Reynold’s abs, Jennifer Lopez’s butt, Pamela Anderson’s tits, and Ron Jeremey’s dick all rolled into one. Is that too sexy for you? Well change your panties because it gets better than Ryan Reynod’s abs if you can believe that.

Smart blood is basically programmable flesh. In theory, it’ll allow us to control our biology the same way we control apps on our smartphones. At first, it’ll be used for basic monitoring and diagnostics, but that’s not very sexy. The real appeal is how it will enhance us.

Let’s face it, human beings are really OCD about how we use our technology. It’s not enough to just fix a problem. We have to enhance it, even if it creates a whole new set of problems. So long as those problems don’t make our lives too inconvenient, we’ll gladly take them. It beats dying of small pox or not being able to get an erection after the age of 65.

Smart blood will enhance us in ways that we can’t predict. It’ll do this in ways I discussed in a previous post and explored in my book, “Skin Deep.” However, the events of “Skin Deep” only explored the effects on one particular character. What happens when a large number of people are enhanced with smart blood? What happens when there’s an entire society of people with smart blood in their system?

That’s something I’d like to discuss because it has many possibilities, many of which have sexy implications. It requires another thought experiment, one that means peering decades into the future after smart blood technology has been perfected. This is difficult because we can’t even predict the weather beyond a couple weeks. How can we predict something like this?

Well, history does offer an important guide. As we saw with the advent of birth control, technology does affect society in profound ways. If we’re going to speculate, let’s reasonably assume that humans are just as OCD when it comes to following the trends of history.

Picture this scenario. The year is 2055. Smart blood is not only perfected. It’s as widely available and universally accepted as aspirin. There is now an entire generation of children who grew up with smart blood in their system. In fact, smart blood is such a big part of them that it was with them in the womb because their mothers used it to ensure a healthy pregnancy.

This means that this generation sees having smart blood and all their benefits is normal. What do those benefits do for them? Well, the most obvious benefit is that far fewer members of this generation die in childhood or infancy. Smart blood doesn’t just fight off disease. It detects, suppresses, and treats genetic and autoimmune diseases. If it can’t cure the condition, it at least suppresses it in a way that allows people to live a healthy life.

So an entire generation never knows disease. They never know what it feels like to jam a finger, get the flu, or endure a hangover. Take a moment to envy those lucky shits, but then take it several steps further because the implications go beyond hangovers.

If smart blood enhances every part of the body, including the sexy parts, then that means it’ll enhance the sexiest body part of all, the brain. No, I’m not being factitious. It’s true. The brain is the center of all things sexy because it is the center of how we process all things. Those things include the sexy stuff.

As amazing as the brain is, it still has room for improvement. It’s good at recognizing patterns and warning us when a hungry grizzly is near. It’s not so good at helping us endure the biological torture that is puberty, peer pressure, and high school. I’m pretty sure my brain shut down for significant parts of my sophomore and junior year. I imagine many more feel like their brains fail them in similar situations.

With smart blood, however, the brain is enhanced like every other organ. That means for this generation, they basically have cheat codes for learning and comprehending the world. That means they can read, listen, and learn with much greater efficiency than those of us who don’t have smart blood.

In terms of education, that’s a big fucking deal. A good chunk of our bloated, inefficient education system is a product of outdated methods that fail to educate kids. With smart blood and the growth of online learning programs like Khan Academy, everyone will be able to get a world class education, hopefully without having to endure mid-terms, acne, and lazy teachers who just teach for the health benefits.

As a result, this means that an entire generation could have the same educational aptitude as a high school valedictorian by the fourth grade, if not sooner. Sure, that means we’ll have a generation of smart-asses, but they’ll be smart-asses for the right reasons.

That education goes beyond simply knowing the name of every Russian Tsar or being able to factor 10-digit numbers in their head. In addition to memorizing facts, smart blood will also improve the parts of the brain that process our emotions and social cues.

Children’s brains are basically like a computer getting a long list of updates. It takes a long time and there are bound to be many glitches along the way, as anyone who ever attended a pre-school birthday party can attest. Smart blood can deal with those glitches and speed up the download. Imagine a 7-year-old having the maturity of a 27-year-old. Then again, given the recent trends in reality TV, that bar may be too low.

On top of being highly educated and emotionally healthy, keep in mind that smart blood would also basically eliminate unplanned pregnancies, teenage or otherwise. As I speculated before, smart blood will allow women to have total control over their fertility.

From the moment their born, it may even be their default setting. They cannot and will not ovulate until they inform the smart blood in their body to do so. It’s perfect contraception, no pills or uncomfortable implants needed.

Why is this a big deal? Why is being educated and not having unplanned pregnancies a big deal? Well, come back to the present time for a moment and you’ll see something pretty telling. According to Pew, couples who are college educated are among the least likely to get divorced and the most likely to marry for the right reasons. Apparently when people are smart, they make smart decisions in their love life. Go figure.

Now imagine an entire generation that’s even smarter and not burdened by unplanned pregnancies. That means that they’re less prone to loving someone for the wrong reasons or having sex with someone for the wrong reasons. How many of our problems in society have come from such stupid decisions? How many episodes of Jerry Springer did these stupid decisions create?

We can never know, but the generation that uses smart blood won’t have to deal with that burden. Sure, they’ll still make mistakes, but smart people know how to deal with mistakes and overcome them. Thanks to smart blood, these simple mistakes will be less likely to ruin their lives and harden their hearts.

What will this mean for the love they find? What will this mean for the relationships they create? What will this mean for their sex lives, their children, or their communities as a whole?

In terms of their sex lives, I think our imaginations are dirty enough to have some ideas. If this generation is intelligent in both facts and emotions, then they’ll be able to relate to one another with much greater efficiency. That means they’ll be able to form more meaningful bonds and have the emotional capacity to express those bonds in a mutually loving way.

That may very well make for the kind of hot, steamy sex life that every bad romance novel ever written has ever described. Even some of the overly heated, overly steamy romances I conjure in my books would be considered basic by these standards.

Think about it, provided you have clean underwear. A young couple, a highly educated man and highly educated woman with the kind of enhanced bodies that are usually reserved for bad Photoshop covers, wants to make love. They know each other’s wants, needs, and proclivities to the letter.

Thanks to the influence of smart blood, they have the fortitude, stamina, and desire to do anything and everything they want in their sex life. They can hump like lions in heat for hours on end. Or if they want to slow things down, they can play every Barry White song ever made and make love slowly and passionately like every Twilight movie ever made.

What kind world would we live in if people had sex lives like that? Would it be more peaceful? I imagine it would. I’ve never met anyone, male or female, who has a great sex life and is regularly in a bad mood. How can you have great sex an hate anybody? It’s not physically or emotionally possible.

A generation fueled by smart blood may very well consider this normal. Thanks to smart blood, this generation won’t suffer and decline with age. If anything, age will just give them time to come up with more creative ways of expressing their love and exploring their sexuality.

What this generation of super-smart, super-sexy, super-emotionally competent men and women come up with is beyond my imagination, but that won’t stop the romance/erotica writer in me from trying.

Beyond this point, it’s impossible to speculate. However, this is a future that may very well manifest within our lifetimes. What will we tell this generation? How will we explain to them that we lived in a time where we had to worry about diseases, unplanned pregnancies, divorce, sham marriages, and Tinder? I don’t imagine that’ll be a pleasant conversation. I just hope smart blood enhances their sense of humor as well.

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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 18, 2016 · 6:51 am

How Do We Fix The Human Body (Namely The Sexy Parts)?

I’ve done a lot of complaining these past few weeks. I admit it. I’ve covered some pretty depressing shit recently. There’s just no way to put a positive spin on the gross injustices of gender inequality or how double standards make men and women hate each other way more than we should. I’m not making anyone’s panties moist by talking about this stuff. I know that. That’s why I’m hoping this gets everyone back in the mood.

I feel I’ve already gotten my point across. The human race is an amazing, but imperfect species. Sure, we do have some pretty awesome hardware, as the health benefits to orgasms so wonderfully demonstrate. Anyone who watched the Olympics this year knows we can do some pretty awesome things with that hardware.

That said, it’s still full of bugs, flaws, and imperfections. The human body, as it is right now, is like the first version of Windows. For those of you too young to remember the days when we couldn’t download a billion pictures of tits on our phones, this is what that version looked like.

It’s old. It’s dated. It’s not very sexy anymore. There’s a damn good reason why it gets upgraded and updated all the time. Sure, those upgrades aren’t always the best, as anyone who used Windows Vista for more than five minutes knows all too well. At least future upgrades can fix the crap that the last upgrade created.

We take those upgrades for granted because the human body doesn’t get upgraded. We’re born into one body. We’re stuck with that body. The chemistry within that body is prone to all sorts of flaws. According to the National Human Genome Research Institute, there are approximately 6,800 rare genetic diseases that we know about. There’s a real possibility there are a few that we don’t know about and won’t know about until someone suffers horribly from it.

Those are a lot of flaws and for most of human history, we couldn’t do squat about them. Our best bet was to just hope we weren’t born with any of these flaws and those are some pretty long odds. As someone who regularly loses at poker, I know all too well how long odds tend to screw people over and not just with money.

We’re lucky to live in an age where some conditions can be managed, but even if we’re lucky enough to be born with these flaws, there’s still the matter of upkeep. I’m not just talking about staying in shape, avoiding hungry bears, and not eating things that’ll make you violently throw up your internal organs. Even when we give the human body everything it needs, it’s still woefully inefficient at making use of those needs. Hell, it’s downright lazy at times.

The human body, like the bodies of all animals, is designed for two things: survival and reproduction. That body evolved on the African savanna and while it has proven adaptable to many environments and conditions, it’s still a crude piece of hardware that’s easily broken, easily wounded, and breaks down over time.

The human body is not like a car. Sure, we can spray on a tan, even if it makes us look like an old baseball glove. Sure, we can get plastic surgery and expensive skin treatments, even if they make us look like glorified crash test dummies with wigs. The human body still breaks down. It still ages and dies.

In fact, the rule of thumb in biology is that once your body stops growing, it starts dying. From an evolutionary perspective, it has to. Individuals of a species have to die in order to free up resources from the young and the growing who aren’t as close to dying. Is it harsh and crude? Yes, it most certainly is. However, it’s a process that has kept life going for a couple billion years on this planet so it must be doing something right.

Beyond its limited survival abilities, even the good parts are limited. The average male orgasm lasts only seven seconds. The average female orgasms lasts around twenty. Granted, those brief moments are a lot of fun, but who among us hasn’t longed for a longer stay in O-Town?

By that same token, who among us hasn’t longed for a body that doesn’t bloat up after eating a tub of ice cream? Who hasn’t longed for a body that doesn’t need parts of it shaved every other day? Who hasn’t longed for a body that isn’t hung over after drunk karaoke night at the bar? Who, I ask?

Clearly, there are many aspects about our bodies that we would like to improve. Fixing these flaws in the body is a critical step in fixing the flaws that emerge between people in general. Think about it. If you had the body of an Olympian and could eat chocolate-covered bacon every day without getting sick, would you be able to hate anyone? I think not.

It all seems like a fantasy, but it’s one I’ve explored before. In my book, “Skin Deep,” I explored the concept of changing your body, becoming as beautiful as you wanted to be and indulging in all the decadent pleasures you wanted. That’s every supermodel, actor, and professional athlete’s dream. You think Brett Favre would’ve retired if he had that option? I think not.

While the mechanisms I used in this book were fantasy, complete with technobabble refined from years of comic book and Star Wars jargon, the concept is not entirely fantasy. There actually is some science behind the inspiration to this story that was full of sex, romance, and teen melodrama.

How is this possible? Well, keep in mind that there is one powerful trait that sets humsn apart from the chimps, spiders, and pond scum of this planet. We build things. We build very elaborate things. I’m not talking about sticks and spears. I’m talking about big ass buildings in the middle of the desert.

The ability to build shit that helps us survive is a big reason why the human race is the dominant species on this planet. Beyond the big buildings, we also build amazing medical devices like CRISPR, which is to genetic engineering what a wrench is to a mechanic.

We are rapidly advancing to a time when we’ll have to tools to finally give our bodies the upgrade it needs. That raises all sorts of fundamental ethical and moral questions, but those questions aren’t very sexy so I won’t be touching on them too much.

Instead, I’m going to ask a simple question that I hope to answer in multiple posts. How would you upgrade the human body? Specifically, how would you upgrade it in a way that would allow us to be more intimate, more loving, and more understanding of one another?

There are all sorts of crazy enhancements that some would pursue just for the hell of it. I’m sure there are some people out there who would enhance their bodies in ways that would help them get the hell away from people in general. Sheldon Cooper of “The Big Bang Theory” comes to mind, but he’s an unapologetic asshole so this little thought experiment doesn’t apply to him.

For most of the non-Sheldon Cooper population of this planet, we’re an affectionate people who seeks intimacy with others. Our bodies provide some mechanisms for that, but those mechanisms are woefully limited by the forces of biology, evolution, and all the petty, unjust bullshit we tack onto it. There has to be a better way, right?

So before I start talking about specifics, think about this question. Think about how you seek love, intimacy, and understanding right now. How would you make that better? How will future tools make that better? Would you want orgasms to last longer? Would you want to share your thoughts with someone? Would you want to improve your senses so you can hear, touch, smell, and see your lover more clearly? What would you do?

Think about it and don’t shy away from the sexy implications. Hell, embrace them! These are implications that I want to explore as an erotica/romance writer and I think they’re worth exploring. At some point, the future will catch up to us and it will affect us. If we’re not ready, we’ll miss out on the sexiness and who wants to miss out on that?

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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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September 16, 2016 · 6:29 am

Virtual Reality: The Future/End of Intimacy?

There was a time when the idea of having a hand-held device that allowed you to communicate directly with others, translate multiple languages, and access a near-limitless database of free porn seemed absurd. In fact, it seemed so futuristic that these fanciful devices often showed up in sci-fi shows like Star Trek. How many people who watched that show really thought that such a device was even possible?

That time really wasn’t that long ago. I’m still old enough to remember pagers and flip phones. That alone makes me feel way older than I want to, but it illustrates an important point. What seems like crazy science fiction today can become a reality in the future. It can even happen within our lifetime.

There are people who grew up watching Star Trek who now have smartphones. I can only imagine how amazed they must feel whenever they send an email, translate a conversation, or watch free porn. It’s an amazing and beautiful thing, right?

There’s another futuristic, seemingly impossible gadget that, for the moment, is still relegated to the world of Star Trek. It’s a gadget that also relates to my ongoing discussion about hugs and the importance of human contact.

It’s a gadget that has the potential to disrupt society in ways that pales in comparison to smartphones. In fact, it could be so disruptive that some speculate that it could be mankind’s last invention. Which invention could be this disruptive? Ladies, gentlemen, and those of unspecified gender, I give you the holodeck.

Without getting into the sci-fi jargon that will probably get me beat up by angry Trekkies and physicists, I’ll stick to the basics here. A holodeck is basically the ultimate extreme in virtual reality. It creates simulations so life-like that they’re indistinguishable from reality. If our feeble brains, which are still working under the assumption that we’re cavemen living on the African savanna, interprets it as reality, how can we possibly tell the difference?

Our brains are already easily fooled. It’s not just funny brain teasers that make us question our own internal wiring. As I’ve pointed out on this blog many times before, our brains aren’t wired to make sense of reality. They’re wired to help us survive and reproduce. That’s part of why we have such wonderful evolutionary manifestations like orgasms. In that context, it stands no chance against a holodeck.

It may seem like such an advancement is a long ways off, but I imagine early Stark Trek fans thought the same about smartphones. This invention is already in its nascent stage. At the moment, we call it virtual reality and it’s just starting to develop a consumer base.

Thanks to continued advances in computing power and a growing market for more immersive experiences, VR is becoming more mainstream and affordable by the average consumer. Like personal computers and smartphones before it, VR is creating a new market for new experiences. Those experiences, by the way, will probably involve virtual porn.

New markets mean new profits. History shows time and again if there’s a profit to be made, it’s going to happen. It’s the reason the War on Drugs is doomed to fail. It’s the reason the wars on porn, smoking, and everything fun that religion and government despises is doomed to fail. It’s also the reason why VR will become more and more indistinguishable from reality as time goes on. The recent success of Pokémon Go is proof enough of that.

So that begs the question: what happens to us when we reach the point where we have a functioning holodeck? What does that mean for the human race? What will it mean for our basic desires for intimacy?

Well, let’s all channel our inner horny teenager for a moment and state the obvious. Just as we saw with VHS and home video technology, VR and holodecks will likely be used for porn. This isn’t speculation. This is a certainty. Someone is working on this right now as we speak. You can count on it.

Do a quick thought experiment and picture how you’d use a holodeck. If I’m really horny, I could create an entire army of beautiful women that look like a mix of Kate Upton, Halle Berry, Scarlett Johanson, and even Starfire from DC Comics if I want. In case you’ve forgotten, Starfire looks like this.

See where I’m going with this? On top of that, with the right programming, I can make these simulations do whatever perverse shit I can think of. If I want them to cover their bodies in oil, pour chocolate on my dick, and take turns licking it up, I can do that.

I’m sure that’s not the kinkiest thing I could do. I’m sure there are others out there with far kinkier proclivities. A woman using such a device could create a football team of Channing Tatums and Brad Pitts, each programmed to cover her body in honey and lick it off.

I’ll stop speculating right now because I think I’m revealing too much about my own perverse fantasies. Also, they’re making me very hungry. Maybe writing this on an empty stomach was a bad idea, but it’s too late now.

It doesn’t matter how perverse your tastes are. They can even be outright illegal. So what if someone uses a holodeck to have sex with a baby elephant? It’s a simulation. It’s technically not hurting anyone or anything real. Even so, the mere fact that someone will probably use a holodeck to do something like this is kind of a mood-killer.

Again, our brains aren’t wired to be rational and make sense of reality. It’s wired for survival and reproduction. So if a holodeck simulation is that realistic, our brains literally aren’t equipped to tell the difference.

Imagine the kind of confusion this would cause. Hell, this would be 10 steps beyond confusion. This is a dissociation with reality on par with The Matrix. When a simulation becomes that real and malleable, would we even want to escape? It’s either face a cold, harsh reality or spend more time wrestling naked with Starfire and Halle Berry. That’s not a balanced decision, to say the least.

Whether you’re an anti-social sociopath or a hugger like me, a holodeck can literally give you everything you need to fulfill all the physical and emotional needs you want. I can go from having a three-way with a couple of supermodels to hugging every member of my family, even those who have passed away, on a whim. The caveman wiring of my brain will tell me I’m doing exactly what I need to survive and reproduce. Why would it want me to stop?

The cynical side of me says that I’ll join the billions of other humans on this planet who will go extinct with a big, content smile on my face. However, the less jaded side of me, which also happens to be the side that helps me craft sexy romance stories, thinks there are other possibilities.

If history is any guide, and it often is, human beings can and do adapted to these major disruptions. The 20th century gave us a number of examples, but one in particular stands out. It involves the impact of contraception and, to a similar extent, antibiotics.

It’s easy to forget in a era where contraception is so ordinary that only right-wing religious nut-jobs like Rick Santorum speak against it. Women today have all sorts of methods for controlling their fertility, deciding when and in what circumstances they’ll bear children.

This is a huge shift compared to the bulk of human history where contraception was limited to pulling out, make-shift condoms, and the medical treatments on par with smearing chicken entrails on tumors. Then, after centuries of uncertainty and superstition, we created something that worked. It worked so well that it disrupted a great many these assumptions we once had about society.

Think, for a moment, how jarring that must have been. Suddenly, women don’t have to lament whether or not they’ll get pregnant after one night of reckless indulgence. Suddenly, society has some measure of control over a basic human function. It was exciting and scary. Hell, the Catholic Church is still scared to death of contraception, which is saying a lot from the folks that gave us 2,000 years of hellfire and brimstone.

Despite what religious institutions and bad reality TV shows would prefer, contraception is not going away. It impacted society immensely, but you know what? Society adapted. The human race hasn’t gone extinct. Civilization hasn’t collapsed. The fact that people can now hump without as many consequences as before didn’t destroy humanity. It just freed us up to focus on other things.

By and large, this shift has been positive. As society has adapted, violence throughout the industrialized world has declined sharply. Opportunities for women have risen as well and not just because they can have sex with fewer consequences. This disruption that upended centuries of limits did so much good. So how much good can advancements in VR and holodecks achieve?

It’s impossible to say, but it’s a question worth asking. What do people do when they have a means of meeting their physical, emotional, and sexual needs with relative ease? We’ve never lived in a society like that before. Remember, though, until recently, we had never lived in a society where women had control over their fertility. We had no idea what to expect, but we adapted. We improved as a civilization and there’s still room for improvement.

I don’t want to be too much of an optimist. With every advancement comes challenges and pitfalls we can’t possibly foresee. At some point, somebody will use VR or holodecks to do something that’ll make us throw up. However, like those who use ski-masks poorly, we must take the good with the bad.

In the end, I believe the good will outweigh the bad. I think when human society has a means of meeting all their physical, emotional, and sexual needs, the sheer breadth of human potential will be realized.

What form might this potential make? How would such a society function? How would it adapt? These are all important questions to ask, but they’re impossible to answer right now. That said, they could make for an interesting premise of a book. Think about it, a story involving a holodeck told by an erotica/romance writer who writes stories about strippers and sex cults? That could be interesting, among other things.

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