We have seen the future and it is now. Look at all the futuristic crap we already have, and Steve Jobs just won’t stop introducing more modern crap every two weeks or so, before we even figure out what the hell the last one was supposed to do. Every electronic device we have acquired in the past six months is already obsolete and we haven’t even figured out how to use them yet. Who ever uses anywhere near one quarter of all the functions of their computer? And if so, why? For what? Now we hear that some other company has introduced touch screens a lot more advanced than Apple’s, able to respond to an infinite amount of touches. Sounds a little kinky, no?
Still other companies are promising us computers that need no screens, just a pair of 3-D type glasses that project images in front of our eyes in thin air! Others promise that the geeky 3-D glasses won’t be necessary, they’ll just implant chips in our eyes and receptors elsewhere on our person that will connect us to the internet and powerful computers with just a thought. One supposes that cell phones will be included in our chip installations, so we can just do that thumb and pinky thing we use to pantomime making a phone call to actually make phone calls. Presumably, e-mail, calendars, contact lists, address books and GPS devices will also be built in. Wonder what will happen if we don’t pay our phone bill? It all sounds kind of creepy and Star Trekky.
Speaking of creepy, the Japanese are thisclose to perfecting a lifelike sex robot, a computer with plastic skin and organs indistinguishable from the real thing and “fully functional.” Fully functional? Given the very wide range of human sexual preferences, the researchers at the sex robot company must have had some very interesting experiences compiling the computer commands necessary to make a sex robot fully functional. The line for that job had to be pretty long, and undoubtedly the research was exceptionally thorough.
All in all, great news for girlfriend-challenged geeks the world over, and perhaps the end of life as we know it. Robot lovers would find no fault with us, will never refuse a request, never get sick or old or tired of us. And if we tire of them, we could always program a new personality, change their hair, skin or eye color, or simply screw around with other sex robots and never have to deal with jealousy, separation or divorce. Threesomes? Not a prob. Oddball sexual tastes? Just change the settings. Lots of people would swear off real spouses with their insistent demands, their aging and personality changes. Could be a real herd-thinner, this one, with the birth rate plunging drastically and production of sex-robots soaring.
Now add to the list of techno wonders a pill that will keep our muscles and bodies in perfect shape by fooling our bodies into thinking we’ve just exercised for an hour or so. Perfection without exertion! No more diets, no more jogging or sweating in gyms, no more wearing sweat pants all the time when we outgrow yet another wardrobe. Perfect 6 pack abs while we enjoy a perfect 6 pack of imported lager! Does it get any better than that?
Then there’s the plan to seed the planet with trillions of tiny sensors so that nature can now talk to us, with lakes and rivers warning us when they are about to flood, the earth telling us it is about to quake, food crops reminding farmers that they are getting ripe and it’s harvest time and who-knows-what else. Will we even need eyes anymore? If tomatoes will be able to tell us when to pick them, what will these sensors tell about us? Will there be such a thing as privacy anymore? Will everybody else find out all the crazy things we’re up to with our sex robots? Sounds like Big Brother will be watching, and Big Brother will be everybody.
Back to the sex robot thing (that one’s got everybody thinking furiously). These robots beg the question: If they can be created and programmed to be perfect replicas of human beings, why are we limiting them to performing sex acts? Why not send them to work? They don’t need any sleep, and we’ll sure need plenty of it from all the sex we’ll be having. Let them deal with commuting and our crazy bosses while we chill! There’s all sorts of lousy jobs they could be doing, like sewer cleaners, McDonald’s clerks and dentists. They’d never give anybody any lip since they will be programmed to be cheerful and compliant.
And we’ll all know if they’re doing a good job or not with all those sensors feeding us data, maybe even program some of them to get two jobs so we can buy everything we want and not have to do a damned thing. Could it be possible that all this technical wizardry will help mankind evolve into what we’ve always wanted to become, healthy and robust stay-at-home couch potatoes with our every whim catered to?
So, maybe this confusing glut of perplexing technology is leading us to the Promised Land after all. Built-in brain video, beer, chips, perfect physical conditioning without any tedious physical exertion and sex robots to indulge our every fantasy? Sounds too good to be true, so it probably is. Odds are that none of these wonders will work remotely as advertised, and wind up being only more confusing gadgets to frustrate and torture us. But we can dream, can’t we? At least that’s one thing we can all do without technical assistance.