Here’s my two cents about tomorrowland: The future is in the transhuman.

Mankind has been struggling against the fetters of the flesh, the banal, the mundane since the discoveries of clothing, psychoactive drugs (including alcohol), body building, steroid use, meditation, and every manner of modification including neck stretching, teeth filing, skin coloring, scarification, tattoos, elective surgeries, the crippling of children to improve their careers as beggars, and more.

I am surrounded by a growing percentage of individuals visibly sporting more tattoos than traditional circus attractions and convicted felons. There is also a plethora of hardware hanging from forehead, lips, and nostrils – including hog rings (and that is only what is visible). In addition to piercings there are implants of every manner including dental, dermal, breast, calf, and buttock.  There are even the absolute creepiest DIYs for piercing of the male member.

Beyond the realm of vanity and elective mutilation, organ transplants are no longer uncommon, and growing replacement skin and organs is burgeoning technology: fiction’s fodder has become reality.

The first company which is able to receive FDA approval for an implantable computer interface is going to make a zillion dollars – even if it “may” cause brain tumors should the user exceed “casual use.”  The age of the megacorporation is upon the public and we are their food.

The discovery of the point contact transistor in 1947 New Jersey was less than a hundred years ago.  Watson and Crick published their historic work in 1953.  Developments in genetic engineering are more impressive than those of computer technology.  However it is because of computer technology that the rate of contemporary genetics research is possible.

Organic processes (like evolution) are rarely clean, neat, or isolated. Almost without realizing it as such, we are well into the age of the Transhuman:

My friend Stelarc could be correct; transhumanism may be where we are heading. The first person to figure out how to implant/grow animal features (plates, scales, fur, feathers, and/or muscle mass) in human beings will be a zillionaire.  Smeary tattoos and non-essential holes in the flesh will be the equivalent of bell bottoms and  bobby socks.

E-v-e-r-y-b-o-d-y wants to be something more than what they are now. Some even want to be machines and/or have sex with them.  It could even be that AI will remove the human from the equation of the future altogether.

Machines will evolve. Clever people will make clever products and market them in clever fashion. That’s the way things work.

In a world of posers, whiners, and “wanna-bes,” David Cronenberg may be up to something. Any volunteers?