Where are the tits?

Where’s the gaydar?
The frikkin laser-beams?
The personal soundtrack generator?
The shiny metal ass for others to bite?
The future is a gyp.

I agree. Without the laser beams attached to the head, being a posthuman feels sorta empty.

Do ya think Jesus’ magic tricks would stay with the body? Cause I’m thinking I would get the DNA out of the Shroud of Turin and put my brain in it. It would really suck if it turned out to be a hoax tho’.

and Emmy award winning actor, William Shatner.

Every time I see those words, a little part of me dies.

What, all that and STILL no fucking jet-pack?

That’s it, I quit…

mikey

How about a Josh Trevino nanotech wiener? It’s invisible to the naked eye.

And with this awsome super body, Glenn would still be a wanker.

A wanker OF THE FUUUUTURE!!!

But a wanker never the less.

So at a conference on transhuman futures they have Shatner but not Doctorow?

Where is the prehenstile penis?

Sure, a gleaming turbo-charged vacu-wank appendage. Sell them with Glenn’s picture on them so you know they’re good. Make you come like crazy.

OK, I have just violated several personally-imposed boundaries. I must leave the computer now…

Question: which of the following trans-post-human features do you find most appealing?

Orangeness.

You wanna keep your eye on that Transposthuman guy — he’s got his foot in your tip jar while he’s externally stimulating atmospheric tensions. Just sayin’.

Oh yeah, baby, externally stimulating atmospheric tensions. Let’s get torr up!

[T]he theme of TransVision 2007 is: Transhumanity Saving Humanity: Inner Space to Outer Space, and will feature three full days of compelling dialogue with the greatest minds of today about creating the civilizations of tomorrow. TV07 brings extraordinary people from across the globe together with more than 30 distinguished speakers, entertainers and visionaries including: award-winning inventor, futurist, author Raymond Kurzweil; acclaimed longevity scientist, Aubrey de Grey; and Emmy award winning actor, William Shatner.

It just occurred to me that if you substitute Bi-Monthly Science Fiction Convention (BiMonSciFiCon) for TV07, you’ve got a Simpson’s episode.

I’m for the parabolic hearing. As it is, I can pick up the hyperbole easily enough, but those annoying little parabolas are completely outside my range.
And the nekkidness.

A Mehitabrain.

I’m drunk right now and thinking an extra liver could come in handy.

Cardio flow and function monitor
Reminds me of one of Will Burroughs’ remarks. I can’t remember the exact words, but it was along these lines: “Americans are so obsessed with control, they won’t be happy until they dive down into their own lower intestines and shovel the shit by hand.”

Here’s what I want.

Hair that doesn’t grow unless you want it to.

Toenails and fingernails that never need clipping.

An internal interdimensional portal to shunt waste out of my body into a very smelly universe where the inhabitants would be really mad if they could get to us.

Basically, anything to get rid of pointlessly repetitive sisyphean tasks.

What about the important stuff?

The bright green shapeshifting phallus with internal strobe light.
The bio-symphonic Le Petomane Brand musical sphincter.
The lip-finger for no-hands nose-picking.
The inflatable warts.

hmmm, for some reason, Future Human looks more like Future Man. Is there a separate Future Woman, or will we all be bald men with no breasts and Smart Skin in the future?

One of the speakers at TransVision 2007 is Natasha Vita-More. Her site has a diagram of the Primo Posthuman 2005. In addition to the image Brad reproduces above, the diagram includes the following explanatory notes:

Warranty: Additional twenty-fourth chromosomal pair. Guaranteed for any genetic defects. Immune system guaranteed against all known pathogens.

Return – Exchange Policy: Replacement body upon request. Disclaimer: Abused body will be replaced at owner’s expense. We reserve the right to replace with a used model.

PrimoStar System: Unlimited service calls. Service range located within Asteroid Belt.

The architecture of Primo’s physique is designed for mobility, flexibility and longevity.

We like to think of it as a cross between Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier and Valentine.

Would that be Bobby Valentine?

Funny how the wetwire/biomod talk always circles around to Burroughs sooner or later. Way-out sexual hybrids. Mugwumps. talking assholes, etc. and it always gravitates back to a single quote:

“Old fool sold his soul for a strap-on.”

Aubrey de Grey may just be the reincarnation of the Tiptoe through the Tulips guy.

Or Rasputin.

Shatner at a Transhumanity Con.

Why do I keep hearing;

“KHAAAANNNNNN!!!!” ?

Having the ability to experience all of the enjoyable sensations of the human body without the burden of the body.

Don’t rip on Shatner. He’s the man. He’s spent the second half of his career mocking himself for being such a cheeseball. You gotta respect that.
Also, that SNL sketch telling Trekkies to get a life is just….. awesome.

Teh Awesome!!

mikey

Does that mean that after all these years, Glenn just wants to be Denny Crane?

John Bobbitt could have used an extra organ…

Organ donors

Transhuman, eh? May this old man indulge in just a bit of, oh, how do you kids say it, meh.

Fuck. It’s 2007. I’m living in a world that has already lost thompson and zevon. In a way, I’ve already gone past my expiration date. Real acid, real rockinroll and real news are all gone. I have better guns, but shittier targets. I live in a place that can effectively marginalize weirdness. My power wanes. The future belongs to, what? Who are the rebels and outlaws? With what will you challenge the status quo? Think about it. It was more fun thirty years ago. Nope. Thats not an old man indulging in nostalgic madness. It really was. Can you make it fun again? Can you make life something more than a tragic downward spiral of financial desparation and safe, uniform behavior?

Appropos of nothing, here’s Roland.

C’mon you guys, step up and fill these shoes…

mikey

I want the Error Correction Device, so that when I do something appallingly stupid (such as throwing my frock over my head and dancing on the table after a few drinks) I can rewire the universe so it never happened.

What? It won’t even do that one, simple, thing?

I feel cheated.

I’m with Jon H.: I want to be able to command my hair and leave it at that. I’m tired of waxing the legs and suchlike.

And it would be rather nice to be able to spontaneously grow a lovely coat of fur for the winter. Might devastate the fashion industry, too, so there’s absolutely no downside.

Bubba, your “Orangeness” caused me to laugh immoderately. I’d go for purpleness, myself, possibly with metallic highlights in places. And the ability to glow in the dark, in case I ever find myself lost in subterranean tunnels and need to find the “Exit” sign.

Plus, I’m intrigued about the Texture Change Skin. I want to be able to change my skin to the texture of sandpaper (rough grade) when I need to get through a crowd fast. And so I could feel slug-like when some bogan makes a move on me: I’m sure fondling what feels like a gastropod might dampen his ardour.

I like Warren Zevon plenty, mikey. Thanks for teh linkey!

I’m intrigued about the Texture Change Skin
I’ve got that already. I made it go all wrinkly. Still looking for the code that changes it back.

I am sort of intrigued by the biosensors that externally stimulate atmospheric tensions. What the hell does that mean?

Fuck. It’s 2007. I’m living in a world that has already lost thompson and zevon.

Who the fuck is Thompson? You had me worried about the Richard version of that particular production line.

It was more fun thirty years ago. Nope. Thats not an old man indulging in nostalgic madness. It really was.

Fucker. I believe you.

Err, Hunter…

mikey

Err, Hunter…

Oh yeah. That guy.

I saw him on a college tour in the midwest and someone sat front row centre in a Nixon mask. Freaked him out a bit.

These transhumanists are thinking small. Primohuman should have musical instrumentation and storage capacity built into it. You can create music on an interface on your forearm for example that only you can hear so you can compose on an airplane or wherever the fuck. Then you plug into an audio system and share it with people when you’re done. I also want hands like Swiss Army knives and x-ray vision.

And R.I.P. the real acid but the real rock is still here. In escalating order of weirdness:

Wilco

Drive-by-Truckers

Sonic Youth and check out Mark Ibold on bass Pavement fans.

TV on teh Radio

More on Smart Skin:

Active integument management system keeps all outer surfaces totally smooth and wrinkle free (unless you choose wrinkles for effect), and maintains maximal suppleness and instant response to sudden demands for stretch and twist.

Color control for instant blending in or standing out. Optional silicon carbide sheath enables you to become almost invisible.

ActiveSkin makes clothing unnecessary and allows you to display written or pictorial messages to convey mood.

Almost invisible? I want total invisibility and I want it now!

The Thompson Twins are dead? Well, fuck…

I am sort of intrigued by the biosensors that externally stimulate atmospheric tensions. What the hell does that mean?

It means you have an orgasm whenever you sneeze.

It would be nice to have George Carlin around forever, come to think of it. Ain’t many like him left, especially with Bill Hicks dyin so young.
I dunno what to say, mikey. You’re right, I suppose. The only people I know really, truly loving life every day are either superhuman or shallow. Since I was only sort of here 30 years ago I can’t speak to the differences without the filter of pop culture bastardization, but, well, assuming the nominee isn’t Hillary, Bush will be replaced with a Dem who’ll end the war. That’s only a fraction of the work to do, so it won’t be a summer of love in 09, but I think you’ll see a major change in climate soon after.
And read this, it’ll cheer you up.

Rock ain’t dead, it’s become obscure. Look for what people like Mike Patton n Bill Laswell n John Zorn n their various collaborators do.
Check out Praxis, mikey, it’s just grown up.

oops. Nevermind that last phrase. Should have been deleted.

P.S. Mikey, here is a Tina Turner link I just ran across.

I favorited it.

I’m assuming the error correction device was added specifically for Instahack.

“Internal wholebody navigational grid”
“biosensors externally stimulate atmospheric tensions”

Is it me or are these utter gibberish?

“Network sonar sensors map data onto visual field”
For the love of God, why? It would confuse the fuck out of you, and anyway our visual field is like 120 degrees and sonar should be 360. Just jack it straight into the part of the brain that deals with spatial manipulation.

Is it me or are these utter gibberish?
If these are any guide, then the instruction manual for your new posthuman body will be an amusing but unreliable translation from Japanese.

Who are the rebels and outlaws?

If you have to ask, then we are doing our job.

It means you have an orgasm whenever you sneeze.

That’s a lot of extra tissue to have to carry around!

Tsk, you silly sci-fi geeks. Obviously, Mr. Shatner is appearing in his role as Denny Crane, legal superstar, who is desperate to replace his “mad cow”-damaged brain before he *completely* loses it…

(/snark) Seriously, I was making fun of James Tiberius Kirk before most of you guys were born, but Shatner actually does a wonderful wink’n’nod parody of himself in BOSTON LEGAL. Also, Candice Bergen is still sexy & smart, James Spader is the snarky liberal who gets to attack rich bloviators almost every week, and there is a gifted & entertaining supporting cast. True, there is the mandatory ex-FBI wooden dummy striding through the credits like Tacticus’ wet dream, and the writers can get excessively self-referential, but there are worse ways to spend a Tuesday evening if you’re too old to go to work with a hangover on Wednesday…

Where are the tits?

Excellent question. We need to include the SmartSub Gel Layer, which will continually shift those fat cells so that its proud owner has giant ever-perky breasts, pert yet shapely buttocks, and wrinkle-free brows & lips.*

And Hugh Hewitt can take his C-cups and shift them to his skull, so that his hat size will approximate his ego size. (I mean, the exterior of his skull. The fatty matter inside his brain pan is probably unshiftable even in the NanoFuture.

*labial lips, in Jonah Goldberg’s world. Or Teh Aces’.

Mikey, just for you:

Last fall we adopted a rescue dog who came with a regrettable name. He is good-looking, healthy, smart & adaptable, an excellent networker, neither aggressive nor over-friendly with other companion animals, great fun at parties. A mere 17 pounds, which is still twice the size a dog of his breed “should” be. The people who fostered him couldn’t understand why such a “perfect” dog was given up for adoption in the first place…

Shortly before the new dog came to live with us, my husband decided to have our brick front steps replaced. Unfortunately, once the steps were torn down, it turned out the base under them needed to be re-dug and re-cemented — and that couldn’t happen until spring, because it was too close to winter for the concrete to set properly. So, the front door now opens to a three-foot drop onto construction rubble.

Six days after New Dog joins our household, on a cold dark drizzly November Sunday evening, I make the mistake of opening the front door — and New Dog, who was sound asleep on the far side of the house seconds earlier, makes a noise I can only transcribe as “Kaaawabungaaa!!!”

Shoots past me through the pitch-black portal, bounces off the rubble without breaking stride, zips through the front gate, across the busy (truck traffic intensive) street, and into the darkness at full speed, head high & tail flying…

The next twelve hours were among the worst of my misspent life. Cruised the neighborhood on foot, in the rain, calling his name, for almost an hour. Repeated the spiral every hour or so, hoping none of the neighbors would call 911 to report a prowling lunatic, sometimes dragging along fat middle-aged Dog #1 in the hope that New Dog would come to her if he wouldn’t come to me. (FMAD#1 vocally objecting since she would have been just as happy never to see New Dog again, even as a pancake on the asphalt, even if she got to roll in the pancake.) Finally reached the town Animal Control official by phone in the morning: New Dog had been picked up by a sympathetic young couple perhaps 10 minutes after he got out, shared a nice dinner (his second) with *their* three dogs, and slept soundly in a nice warm cozy bed…

So now his name is Zevon, ‘cuz he’s just an Excitable Boy.

I started the first of Shatner’s TEK books. It started with a scenario where the worst convicts were sent up to an orbiting station and put into suspended animation to serve out their sentences. When their time was up, they were thawed and released.

That did it for me. What prisoner would consider such a scheme and not want to sign up? Where’s the punishment? Enduring the day to day tedium is the essence of prison. This is one of the few books I’ve read which met Dorothy Parker’s description of a book which should not be tossed aside lightly, but thrown with great force.

Fun thought about “Star Trek!!”

There are three possibilities* in the Star Trek universe:

Given how the process has been described, either (1) Transporter technology somehow transmits the human soul; (2) There is no afterlife; or (3) There are hundreds of James T. Kirks in the afterlife, a new one “born” with the previous one’s memories at the time of each teleportation. Naturally applies to everyone else as well, meaning there are hundreds of them as well.

Hundreds of Chekovs. Uk. I just threw up a little bit in my mouth.

*Of course, there is a fourth possibility; that the soul automatically transfers itself across space to the appropriate receptacle. That’s a little too Intelligent Design for my tastes, though.

mikey, I know this doesn’t solve anything, but you might also enjoy this.

I’m still waiting for that flying car they promised us back in the 1950s. So I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for the orgasmatron or whatever else these people are hyping. Actually, my prediction for the 2050s would be that people still won’t have the metabrain, but they’ll be able to read all about it in Popular Mechanics. Oh, and Ray Kurzweil will be doornail dead. Gone to that great Singularity in the sky.

[…] why didn’t He design me with SmartSkin, hmmmmmm? Why didn’t he give me a kick-ass fiberoptic spinal chord? More importantly, there […]

I’m with you mikey. While i love my Mac, my iPod, all the new tech gadgetry….

But there WAS more fun in the 70s and 80s. More drugs, more screwing, goofy ass clothing (and if an old guy can’t wear goofy clothing, where are we going?)…

Here’s one solution to the soul thing in Star Trek: Souls have an affinity for the physical being to which their attached. When that physical being is discorporated, the soul becomes untethered; once the physical being is re-incorporated via transporter, the soul re-attaches itself. Since the soul is itself, non material, Einsteinian limits like the speed of light don’t apply.

Or, there is no soul and it doesn’t matter.

Mikey, Roland was the theme song for my buddy’s car back in the mid-80’s. We used to road-trip in that car with the music up to 11. There is nothing like bombing along New England back roads yelling “That sonofabitch Van Owen blew off Roland’s head” at the top of your lungs. I still put that track in mixes.

Back on-topic, what the fuck is “Turbocharged suspension flexibility”? Isn’t that a standard feature in all new Subarus?

Can they do extra of ALL organs, if you know what I mean. You never know when an extra willy might come in handy; especially if the first one gets knackered.

Les Hommes 2.0 is missing some stuf IMO.
Skin capable of photosynthesis and a GI tract that can digest anything.
You give society the finger and lay on the beach naked eating the occasional handfull of dirt and drinking water now and then to keep yourself going. Do anything you want free from any encumbrance you do not actively choose to accept.

Oh – switchable tastebuds of course.

ActiveSkin makes clothing unnecessary and allows you to display written or pictorial messages to convey mood.

Oh, just fucking great. Noobs who can rent out their skin to advertisers.
Although, if ladies could adjust boob-size at will, well….
And of course, Johnsons too, then sign me up.

Sounds like somebody’s been watching too much Ghost in the Shell.

“Smart Skin” sounds terrible. I don’t like the idea of my skin being smarter than myself.

Just pleased don’t tell me where they intend to put the batteries.

“which of the following trans-post-human features do you find most appealing?”

The huge orange booty.

I’m fond of John Varley’s future, where you can customize your body any way you want, switch sexes as often as you like and – once you get bored with all that – join up with a Symb and live free in outer space.

uhhh, apparently all our enhanced future-selves will lay around in sports illustrated swimsuit poses too.

“Question: which of the following trans-post-human features do you find most appealing?”

The penis socket with multiple attachments…whee!

yank in london said,
June 1, 2007 at 18:03

The slow worm gets sent to SpEd.

Amazing idea! I find the entire concept most appealing – I want a body that doesn’t age!