Ask A Genius 1084: The Citizen of the Future
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/08/16
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, we’ve already covered pornography.
Rick Rosner: It’s like the fentanyl of porn—so powerful that it’s… We’ve talked about how in the future, people will have more control, depending on when in the future you’re talking about.
When I say “we,” the “we” of the future doesn’t even stay the same. We now are regular humans. We in the future are augmented humans 20, 40 years from now. We, 70 years in the future, are humans who are half-tied to bio-circuitry. More machine than man is the cliché, but we’ll be more… The citizen of 80 years from now will be way less biologically human than we are today.
So, “we” changes over time. The citizen of 150 years in the future will have way more control over their drives and desires. Likely, that person won’t even reproduce sexually and may not have any sexual drives or desires because they’re some sort of cyber being with a whole different set of engineered priorities. The nature of arousal will change, and we’ll modify it for the benefit of the citizens of the future.
In the mix of citizens, there will be a minority of regular-ish humans who will continue to be aroused by things that traditionally aroused humans. But the whole arousal landscape will be dangerous, the way the drug landscape is dangerous now with fentanyl. There will be powerful technologies of arousal that will make you all weird if you let them. But also, we’re going to get sick of normal, evolved sexual arousal because it’s so stupid and at cross purposes with us trying to live full lives.
Living full lives now includes having families, which traditionally means having sex and making children. But in the future, that’s not how we’ll make citizens for the most part, 200 years from now. And so, the citizen of the future might not even have a “boner space” because they won’t have a boner or a vagina—they’ll be some other shape. There’s some sadness for us looking at a future that has increasingly less room for us and less interest in us. But we’re primitive compared to the citizens of the future. You wouldn’t expect them to have any more respect for us than we do for chimpanzees.
We’ll make space for chimpanzees and have fleeting interest, but the future is full of more amazing stuff than we are.
Rick Rosner, American Comedy Writer, www.rickrosner.org
Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Independent Journalist, www.in-sightpublishing.com
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