Tag Archives: technology

February 8, 2017 · 6:39 am

Food and Sex: A (Non-Kinky) Precedent?

Loosen your pants and untuck your shirt because I’m going to talk about food and sex. No, this isn’t going to be that kind of discussion. I know there’s an entire sub-genre that mixes food and sex in a way that is bound to confuse multiple body parts. I’ll save that topic for another day. For now, I want to have a different kind of discussion.

Like it or not, knowing that some will like it a bit too much, food and sex are intrinsically related. They are both vital components in our two primary drives as living beings, survival and reproduction. We need food to survive. We need sex to reproduce. These are as basic a drives as any animal can have.

As such, it’s also fitting that both topics have their fair share of taboos and I’m not just talking about create ways to use whipped cream. Even our old, uptight friends at the Catholic Church have linked food to one of their moral sins. In the same way they condemn excessive sex through lust, they also condemn excessive eating through gluttony.

Granted, the Catholic Church doesn’t make a big deal about gluttony anymore. I figure they know that too many of their adherents have grown fond of buffets, McDonalds, and ice cream. They can still get away with condemning sex because the basic functions of sex still apply today as much as they did 2,000 years ago. However, that may not be the case for much longer.

As I discussed in an earlier post, science is rapidly progressing to a point where we won’t even need sex to reproduce. There will be far safer, less strenuous options that don’t result in stretch marks and mood swings. The most promising is the artificial womb. This technology is the ultimate endgame in terms of decoupling sex from reproduction entirely.

If that term sounds familiar, it should and not just because Gweneth Paltrow used something similar in a way to make herself even less likable. It’s actually a term that I’ve referenced before because it was used frequently in Ray Kurzweil’s book, “The Singularity Is Near.” I’ve lauded this book many times before on this blog and parts of this issue are closely tied to the topics he explores.

In his book, he cites advances in contraception as the catalyst for this growing disconnect between sex and reproduction. He’s not wrong to cite such advances because we’ve spent the last 60 years or so adjusting to a world that contraception has created. It’s a world where women and men have more control than ever in when and how they have children. Such control was truly unprecedented.

Considering how birth control in the past involved pulling out, crocodile poop, and condoms made of animal entrails, we’re still in uncharted territory as a species. We humans have never lived in an age where we had this much control over our facility. The rise of the birth control pill was ground-breaking in terms of its effects on society. We’re still struggling to build a new foundation with those effects.

There’s no question that contraception technology will continue to improve, as Kurzweil discussed. It may get to a point where we have a perfect form of contraception for men and women alike, one that’s as easy to get as aspirin and just as easy to take. Such a time would truly be the Catholic Church’s worst nightmare.

However, despite Kurzweils’ many discussions on contraception and fertility, he never mentioned artificial wombs. To be fair, it’s still an emerging technology with a lot of hurdles. Contraception technology is likely to take priority over the next couple of decades, if only because it has so much momentum. At some point, though, artificial wombs will enter the equation.

This technology will do much more than make it easier for women to avoid getting pregnant when they don’t want to, thereby freeing them up to just enjoy the toe-curling pleasure of sex. It will give society an entirely new way grow. For some, it’ll be strange, sterile, and cold. For others, it offers a bold new vision for the future of the human race.

It’s hard to imagine. As such, it’s easy for writers like Aldous Huxley to have overly-dystopian visions of it in his book, “Brave New World.” Even radical feminists and ardent traditionalists, most of whom are men, worry that this technology will render the other gender completely obsolete. It’s scary, I know, but there is a precedent for this sort of thing. Society can adapt to these kinds of dramatic upheavals. It’s done so before.

This brings me back to food. Here’s a quick question for everyone to contemplate. When was the last time you had to worry about a harvest going bad or not having any animals to hunt? Take as much time as you need. I’ll wait.

Are you done rolling your eyes? Good, because the answer to that question, at least in first-world industrial societies, is pretty clear. They stopped worrying about famine, harvests, and hunting a long time ago. Today, food is cheap, plentiful, and so easy to get that our primary problem is that we eat too much of it.

Compare this with 99 percent of human history. From hunter/gatherer societies to early agricultural societies, the most pressing concern from kings to peasants was having enough food. Every year, societies all over the world lived with the constant dread that a harvest would go bad and they would all starve to death. Famine was like a bad blizzard. It was just a fact of life that you had to endure, accept, and dig out of.

A lot of that changed over the past 150 years. Going all the way back to the 1800s, advances in agriculture technology and farming techniques allowed fewer people to grow more food, so much so that there was time and land to grow cash crops like tobacco, cotton, and weed. It happened slowly, but it picked up steam thank to someone others have called, “The greatest human being who ever lived.”

His name is Norman Borlaug. He’s the father of the so-called green revolution. He’s also the primary reason why billions of people aren’t starving to death. He worked tirelessly to advance agricultural science to a point where even non-industrial societies can grow abundant food, so much so that famine isn’t just rare. It’s an aberration that warrants big budget fundraisers.

As a result, the act of growing, procuring, and preserving food is basically an afterthought in our society. We’re at a point in human civilization where we don’t eat to survive. Hell, we sometimes eat when we’re not even hungry, sometimes for a holiday, sometimes for social purposes, and sometimes just because we damn well fell like it.

Technology gave us this luxury. Technology will continue to improve, ensuring that our growing population will never have to till a field, pick fruit, or kill a deer for anything other than sport. Food is no longer as vital to survival as having a job or knowing where the dumpster behind a fast food restaurant is located.

With this in mind, apply the same concept to sex. Try to keep your pants on, but still try to imagine the world that would emerge. Sex is no longer quite as complex in the sense that people have to worry about the physical, social, and biological implications. In the same way they no longer worry about harvesting food, they don’t have to worry about any major consequences from sex.

In this world, sex isn’t linked to reproduction anymore. It’s just a physical act that two people do for whatever reason they want. It can be romantic. It can be social. It can just be for the hell of it. That’s really all there is to it. There’s no constant worry that it will lead to pregnancy, thanks to improved contraception. There’s also no worry that the population will stagnate because artificial wombs will take care of that.

As a result, the very concept of reproduction is very different from the concept of sex. Society may get to a point where the idea of making someone endure nine-months of pregnancy, and all the physical hell that comes with it, downright inhumane.

Now there will be those who contemplate this world and faint. I imagine many of them are affiliated with the Catholic Church, the Mormon Church, or the Duggars. However, like food production before it, science will change the way we think about sex, reproduction, and intimacy. It’s a matter of when and not if. I do hope it comes in my lifetime because that means the market for erotica/romance is sure to grow.

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February 7, 2017 · 6:29 am

Artificial Wombs: The Solution To Gender Equality?

Let’s face it. There’s a lot to whine about these days. As much as I despise whining, I don’t deny that this world gives us plenty of reasons. From war, famine, injustice, to poor wi-fi, there are a lot of issues that upset us on multiple levels.

When it comes to issues between the sexes, the whining and anger is that much more amplified and for good reason. Biologically, we’re very different. One sex has organs that hurt like hell when they’re kicked. Another has organs that hurt like hell when bringing a new life into the world. Despite these differences, we have powerful drive that urges us to come together, form intimate bonds, and even have sex if we’re lucky.

It’s because of these differences and that powerful drive that there’s so much conflict between men and women. It’s a driving force behind every sitcom, from “Leave It To Beaver” to “Modern Family.” It also fuels every conflict in every romantic comedy ever made, even the ones with Matthew McConaughey.

These conflicts are still an annoyingly persistent part of our political discourse. Modern feminism is driven, in large part, by these differences that manifest in everything from the wage gap to boob sizes on comic book characters. These differences can become so profound that it leads to genuine upheaval, as we saw with the Women’s March.

These upheavals have been with us for years and, given how the last election turned out, it’s likely to stay with us for years to come. There seems to be no end to it. Are men and women doomed to always be at odds?

Well, I try to be more optimistic about the future. I like to think a few extra miles past the finish line to imagine solutions that don’t necessarily always solve the problem, but do essentially render it obsolete. In the same way cell phones made LAN lines obsolete, some problems can just cease at some point.

In that spirit, I believe I’ve found something that would effectively end most ongoing conflicts between genders. It wouldn’t just level the playing field for men and women. It will effectively remove the many excuses that both sides make to hate, despise, and denigrate each other.

It’s not a legal solution. It’s not some ambitious social revolution either that requires everyone to sit through a gender studies class either. It’s a purely technical solution, one that is achievable. Some bold scientists are already working on it as we speak. Ladies, gentlemen, and those of unspecified gender, I give you the Artificial Womb.

I hope it doesn’t need too much of an explanation. It’s exactly what it sounds like. While it’s still on the drawing board, an artificial womb’s function is pretty simple. It’s an external device that allows for the growth, development, and eventual delivery of an infant outside of a physical womb. It’s basically all the joys of creating life, but with none of the stretch marks or morning sickness.

It’s not a new idea. In fact, there has been work on the development of embryos outside the womb going on for years now. It’s also a concept explored in fiction, most family by Aldous Huxley in his book, “Brave New World.” However, that book was basically a dystopian fever dream. I prefer to assess artificial wombs on a more constructive level.

Let’s ditch the dystopian fears and the horrors of some traditionalists who believe that life should only ever be created when a penis and vagina are involved. Instead, let’s think for a moment what an artificial womb would mean for men and women.

First and foremost, an artificial womb would remove one of the main driving forces behind that wage gap I mentioned earlier. When women get pregnant, they need to take time off to deal with their health and their newborn. This means they can’t work as much as men. As such, they don’t make as much money or have as many opportunities.

It’s not a patriarchal conspiracy. It’s basic biology. However, when you circumvent that biology, then suddenly women are free to compete with men more equally. They can still have babies, but they don’t need to put their bodies through nine months of hardship that has been tragically fatal for countless women over the centuries.

Beyond the job opportunities, an artificial womb means a woman has more control over her body. If she doesn’t want the stretch marks from pregnancy to undermine her rock-hard abs, then she doesn’t have to. She can keep looking like a young Janet Jackson while still having kids.

Beyond employment and vanity, though, an artificial womb does something else that might be even more profound. It effectively uncouples sex from reproduction. At the moment, even with things like in vitro fertilization, sex is the primary method for how we reproduce.

Granted, it’s extremely imperfect and prone to error. Then again, you could say the same thing about our immune systems until antibiotics and vaccines came along. In that instance, technology allowed us to rely on something other than the limits of our own biology. An artificial womb is just the next step in that process.

When that process plays out, it effectively changes everything we think we know about sex, which isn’t saying much for some people. Even though we humans have all sorts of reasons for having sex, rather it’s for love or a step in landing a big movie role, we can’t really escape the part where it leads to babies. Sure, we have contraception, but even that only goes so far.

An artificial womb won’t just change how genders relate to one another. It’ll change our fundamental concept of what it means to be intimate. What happens when sex just becomes an act of intimacy and not reproduction? What will that do to our love lives? What will that do to a new generation of children born in these wombs? What will it do for aspiring erotica/romance writers like me?

These are all difficult questions that are worth contemplating, even if they can’t be answered. I know artificial wombs are probably a ways off, but I do think this is one of those technologies that could occur in our lifetime. The next generation may very well be the first to never know the rigors of entering this world through a vagina. What kind of generation will that be? I don’t know, but I hope I have a chance to write sexy stories about it.

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November 15, 2016 · 6:52 am

What BDSM Tells Us About Authority And Our Future

Let’s face it, we humans need some semblance of order in our lives. As a species, we just don’t function well in chaos. We’re a species that will riot in the streets because we’re glad our favorite basketball team won the championship. If aliens landed tomorrow, we’d have a very hard time explaining that to them.

Order and authority is a big part of what makes society function. It’s a big part of what helps humanity survive. As caveman logic tells us, our brains and bodies are wired for only two things: survival and reproduction. They’re wired, designed, and maintained poorly, as I’ve pointed out many times before, but there are over 7 billion of us surviving and reproducing on this planet right now so we must be doing something right.

This leads me to the wonderful world of BDSM. Yes, I know that sounds like a non-sequiter. Yes, I know that sounds like an excuse for me to talk about overtly sexual topics again. No, I will not apologize for it. I don’t think I need to explain myself at this point, nor should I have to.

In reading and writing about BDSM, I’ve picked up on a few underlying themes. Since my brain works in elaborately perverse ways, I often find myself applying those themes to the world around me. BDSM is no exception. If anything, it’s the basic standard.

Earlier this year, I completed a draft of a book called “The Big Game.” It’s a book that explores various forms of BDSM, but not just because I think readers enjoy the mental image of a star male athlete being whipped in the ass by a sexy female librarian type, although I’m sure that has its own kind of appeal.

In this story, I try to apply the principles of BDSM to a bigger picture. That bigger picture has a lot to do with how we function as a society and how we see authority. Some people inherently flaunt authority. Some people desperately need it. Human thought is incredibly diverse on the subject, but whatever our sentiment, it still affects us.

At its core, BDSM cuts through all the chaff, uncertainties, and formalities. When you read about BDSM or practice it, you know who’s in charge. You know who has the authority and who doesn’t. It’s an extremely simplistic scenario that requires little thought. The fact it often involves sex is just a bonus and a damn good bonus if done right.

In many respects, BDSM takes advantage of the biological wiring that’s already in place. There is actual science behind our inclination to obey and conform. A large body of research shows that humans have a genetic and psychological predisposition to obedience and conformity.

When you look at it through the lens of caveman logic, it makes sense. In our caveman state, we can’t dedicate all this mental energy into deciding whether or not we should trust or obey someone. That would be like holding a jury trial just to determine who gets to pick the restaurant on a date night. It’s a wholly inefficient use of our time and energy.

We need to use those resources for more vital issues like securing meat for the winter and doing enough humping to ensure our tribe has enough people to continue. Natural selection does the rest. That’s why nature instills this in our collective psyche. It helps us get along, work together, and survive long enough to get frisky.

However, like most other natural forces within our biology, it’s not that fine-tuned. Nature is a blunt instrument and not a scalpel. If our brains and bodies were computers, then they we’d say they had been wired by a drunk office temp with a bad attitude and a knack for laziness. As a result, this vital programming for obedience and conformity lay the foundation for BDSM.

It’s in this context where our biological programming for obedience goes to an extreme. The fact those extremes bring some people to orgasm only makes it more powerful. When there’s a lot of uncertainty in the world, we naturally look for whatever certainty we can find. As I said before, you can’t get much more certain than who dominates who in BDSM.

Submission, dominance, obedience, and authority are all streamlined in BDSM. You don’t need to dedicate a lick of mental energy to scrutinize the situation. Everything is perfectly structured. Everything is perfectly laid out. For many perfectly healthy people who are concerned about an unhealthy world, there’s a lot of appeal in that situation.

At its core, BDSM acknowledges that we human beings aren’t built, physically or mentally, to be complete independent. We need to submit or dominate certain aspects of our lives. It’s the only way we can make sense of the world and ourselves. That’s a big reason why BDSM experiences are so powerful for some people. It’s also a big reason why it has such appeal.

So what does this mean for our future? Well, that’s a bit trickier to answer. We like to think we’re progressing to a point where we can meet all our physical and emotional needs through technology. That’s not entirely wrong, but a big part of those needs is to have some form of stable authority.

As kids, that authority is our parents. As young adults, that authority is our teachers, law enforcement, and fellow peers. As adults, that authority is our spouses, our bosses at work, or our friends. We built our lives around authority. A part of us needs some kind of authority to submit to. Some need it more than others. Most of us need it more than we care to admit.

The future will create all sorts of new uncertainties. With over 7 billion people with countless (often conflicting) needs, we’ll need some form of authority to make sense of ti all. I don’t know what form that authority will take, but it’s an idea I intend to explore.

It’s also an idea I intend to make sexy in some strange way, but that should be a given at this point. After all, if BDSM can give authority so much sex appeal, then why not embrace it along with our future as a species?

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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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