5 Disturbing Ways the Human Body Will Evolve in the Future
We don't think of ourselves as changing: We're the same basic meat-popsicles we've always been. But some of the surprising changes that the future holds in store for the human body are ball-shatteringly disturbing, so you'd better have an iron stomach if you plan on reading this (though if not, don't worry; that’s probably in the pipeline too).
Bionic Ass
"The patient's lost the use of both arms below the elbow, so of course I recommend we install Flamethrower Hands." Ged, weighing the pros and cons of carrying a bag of poop around for eternity (there was a shockingly short "pro" list) agreed to try an experimental new surgery. The procedure used muscles from his knee to recreate a crude sort of sphincter, with implanted electrodes all throughout that respond to a remote control. Now, Galvin doesn’t have normal control over his bowels, he has supreme mastery over them. With the press of a button, Galvin controls exactly when, where, how much (and, if science is as awesome as this story is making it out to be, hopefully with exactly how much force) he shits. However, even if Galvin himself is sadly lacking in Astro Boy style ass-cannons, believe me when I say this: It is only a matter of time until somebody with both the desire and money gets the idea too. In the future, you’ll have to watch who you mouth off to, because forget knives and guns - that dude at the bar might have a crap-howitzer in his pants loaded with high-caliber feces with your name on it.
Multiple Penises
At the Wake Forest University Institute of Regenerative Medicine, there is a terrifying science factory that does nothing but give birth to penises"Baby, no! Don't be scared! Baby... just... just touch it a little. JUST TOUCH THE COCK THAT SHOULD NOT BE!" The process used to create the bio-cocks can also be applied to other organs with roughly similar levels of success and, really, what does that say about our priorities as a society? You’re not reading a story about the successful recreation of a human heart, are you? Is this an article about the first fully functioning replacement lung? No, the process showed promise, so the first thing we did with it was dong-farming. It’s human nature: Just like you don’t draw the Sistine chapel on your buddy’s forehead when he passes out, so too does Science abandon its high-minded principles and feverishly gets to work on wang-wrangling the first time the opportunity presents itself.
Pictured: Wang Wrangling. "But how does this change the human body?" you might rightfully be saying to yourself. “Isn’t this just regrowing something that was already there?” Well yes, but I'm afraid you may have forgotten to factor in the Internet. Human perversion was evolving at a slow, but steady pace before the World Wide Web connected us all, and then look what happened: It was like a pervert A-bomb. Sexual deviancy leaped forward dramatically, and in an astoundingly short amount of time... because apparently Moore’s law applies to fecalphilia and yiffing just the same as it does technology. We have the ability to grow penises, and the term “body modification” brings up 4-million hits on Google. Those, sadly, are not unrelated concepts; the very second this tech hits the market, you’re going to learn the politically correct term for a man with five cocks.
“I prefer to be called penta-wanged, thank you.”
Fat Shorties
Many people believe that, thanks to the influence of modern technology and the advancement of medical science, humanity has ceased to evolve. After all, isn’t Darwinism sort of meaningless in our over-protective society? You could go out right this very moment and crash a waverunner into a Taco Bell and, rather than throwing a short but joyous party on top of your mangled, spicy corpse to celebrate the effectiveness of natural selection, the bystanders will probably still call an ambulance to try and save your life. There is literally no point at which society considers you too retarded to save. Of what use is evolution, if the race is strong enough that even the grandest and most spectacular of idiots live long, healthy, reproductive lives?"We must save him! He's a genius! Wait... sorry, I was thinking of someone else. But he's a really nice guy! Hm? Oh sorry, wrong again. But he's uh.... we must save him!" While still others believe that humanity has ceased to evolve because they never evolved in the first place, heathen. If I understand correctly (and I rarely do) these people believe that mankind is some sort of animated mud golem, and women are basically just walking McRib sandwiches. But there’s a new study that proposes to refute both claims: Yale University analyzed 14,000 residents of a Massachusetts town and found that short, chubby women had lower cholesterol, lower blood pressure overall and also bore children at a younger age. In short, that they were heavily (sorry) favored by genetics. Oh… shit. That's cause for panic, right? If you’re a fan of tall, skinny women – well you better get humpin’ while they’re still around, friend, because the future is almost here... and it likes Cheetos.
Skin Suits
At the University of Western Australia’s School of Anatomy and Human Biology there is a professor who likes to make clothes out of living skin. Actually, there are several: Oran Catts, Ionat Zurr and Guy Ben-Ary all have a lovely flesh-knitting group and, though they undeniably share a disturbing hobby with serial killers, theirs is completely legal. They’re actually growing the clothes in vats (rather than the more traditional, artisanal method: Harvesting it from Jodie Foster). They've successfully grown a tiny overcoat--complete in every respect from collar to sleeves--entirely out of living skin."No, I heard you. You're 'illuminating the hypocrisy of sexual taboos in mainstream society,' but that really just looks like dick-shadow-puppets to me."
The truly disturbing part of all this, however, is something you may have glazed over: The coat the Australian scientists grew was technically alive the entire timeOrgasm Implants
Right at this very moment, technicians at Intel are working diligently on brain implants that will allow for remote control of electronics. They think the technology will be ready for consumer use as soon as the year 2020, and they also think people will totally line up to have their heads split open and mysterious technology shoved into their brains. And goddammit, they’re right: That sounds awesome! Turning on the TV with a blink, complete mental control of a video game avatar, entering reams of data without lifting a finger or even opening an eye - brain implants would absolutely revolutionize the modern world. There’s just one problem: They’re already doing it. They’ve been around for years… and they're completely ruining lives.Well, not quite that literally.
They’re called Thalamic Stimulators, and their intended purpose is to provide an electrical current to the thalamus that limits muscle tremors from diseases like Parkinson’s. And when they work correctly, they’re actually quite effective. But there's a rare side-effect: “erotic stimulations.” And yes, that is exactly what it sounds like; there are people walking the Earth right now with sex-chips installed in their brains. Initially, that all sounds pretty awesome. What's wrong with that? Who wouldn’t want an orgasm switch? But you should know that--even considering the relative rarity of the devices in the first place, and the even rarer occurrence of these sexual side-effects--there’s already a name for addiction to them: Compulsive Thalamic Self-Stimulation. And the addiction is both serious and harmful. One woman afflicted with mind-gasms wore a hole in her damn finger from pressing the button too much! She even got so desperate that she tried to literally hack into her own brainPictured: The mythical Mega-Boner Switch. It is rumored that, should it ever be thrown, the boner it will cause shall rip the sun itself in twain.
Now, stop and consider that treating erectile dysfunction is the single most profitable use of current pharmaceutical drugs, and you’ll see that the very second brain implants become publicly available, it's going to be as boner switches. But you know what the truly disturbing thought is? It’s not hard-on buttons, or skin suits, or even multi-penises; it’s the simple fact that these innovations are not mutually exclusive. Technology is a cumulative thing. Your phone is your GPS, your computer is your music player, your video game console has an Internet browser; new tech is always going to cross-contaminate. You’re not going to have to cope with oneYou can pre-order Robert's book, Everything is Going to Kill Everybody: The Terrifyingly Real Ways the World Wants You Dead on Amazon, or find him on Twitter, Facebook and his own site, I Fight Robots, where you can learn more reasons to fear all new things before you fully understand them!