Some Assembly Required.

Prosthetics are freakin’ amazing.

There’s a woman named Aimee Mullens. She has no legs. They were amputated at a young age because she had no fibulae in her legs. So she gets around on artificial appendages. And when I say get around, I mean, the woman moves about running, jumping, jogging, and not to mention a dozen other things that my overweight ass can’t even dream of doing with both my legs intact. And that's not even touching on the fact she's hotter than I'll ever be too. It wasn’t that long ago that the loss of your legs meant you were bound to a chair for life. And if you got artificial legs, you could do a little walking, but you would be limited in your mobility. You'd be like the old motorized Transformer toy Sky Lynx, which could "walk". And I say walk in quotes, because the toy was a piece of crap and I'm pretty sure it didn't do much more than waddle back and forth. (Omega Supreme FTW!) This is not the case anymore. It’s utterly astounding the advancements we are making in prosthetics and even robotics. There are currently robotic limb, that not only can do delicate things likes grab coins off a flat surface, (Seriously, you try doing that wearing a pair of gloves. Hard, ain’t it?)… But through surgical attachments to nerve endings, it can allow the wearer to actually FEEL through the arm. Yes, the current technology is nowhere near the advancements of Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell series, but considering that your cell phone has more computing power than some high end computers ten years ago… Let’s be honest, it’s going to get there. I firmly believe we are a the dawn of a post-humanism society, and we didn’t even notice it.

Now, I’ve been around for a while, and I’ve seen cars… Hell, I’ve OWNED cars... that was held together with not much more than bondo and duct tape. I’ve seen computers that jury-rigged like crazy, with old and used parts, and a box fan blowing onto the opened interiors, because the internal fan broke. Nintendo and Xboxes that’s been broken, taped, stapled and even glued back together. It’s ugly as hell… But it all still works. And you know what? As time goes on and cybernetics get more and more informally acceptable in society, we’re going to see cybernetics and prosthetic limbs jury-rigged. Just imagine, you break your artificial arm… You can’t afford to go get a new one. So you go to a Home Depot or a Lowe’s and you buy yourself duct tape and some bonding glue, and fix it yourself. Looks like crap, but it works. Or you get drunk, and your friends decide to swap out your pudgy white robotic leg with that of a slender black woman’s. (Which brings up another question: If you have a prosthetic body, does the concept of race even exist for you anymore?) Getting a tattoo will be the equivalent of getting airbrushed detailing. And you know they’ll make sex toy attachments for the cybernetic limbs, with like various gadgets instead of fingers. Use your imagination. I sure did. (And it’ll be from Japan. Where else would it be from?) We’re going to have iPod jacks (or the future equivalent of the music/entertainment players) built into them. Our bodies will be like our cars. We can have custom made, high priced Mercedes-Benz models… And the low-priced Kia model. We’ll have small ecological friendly models that run off no power at all, that will let you lift ten pounds before needing a recharge, and we’ll have giant ass SUV models that are enormous, guzzles power, pisses off environmentalists, and allow you to lift a ton or more. (If I’m around, I’m so getting one of these! Gonna put a paintball gun in there!)

We’re gonna have cyborg rednecks.

The post-humanist future is freakin’ awesome!