devices has encouraged an almost infinite array of sexual exploration over the past two decades. Without the fear of personal discovery or the potential embarrassment of a face-to-face interaction, people are asking about, investigating, and exchanging information about sex and relationships in ways that weren’t even possible a mere twenty-five years ago. Plus, people increasingly use digital technology as a way to meet and date, and to locate casual, anonymous, or paid-for sexual partners.
Many people also use the Internet to experience “virtual sex.” This idea is not exactly new. In fact, it has long been a staple of science fiction. One amusing cinematic example occurs in the 1973 movie Sleeper, starring Woody Allen and Diane Keaton. In the movie, the “orgasmatron,” a telephone booth-like contraption, helps users become sexually aroused by stimulating their brains in an intensely sexual way. Allen actually confirmed the scientific feasibility of this idea prior to making the film, so it’s not surprising to learn about the existence of a real orgasmatron that was discovered serendipitously in trials for a potential spinal cord stimulator. The device apparently works rather well, but it costs quite a bit of money and requires the surgical insertion of electrodes near the spine. Needless to say, it is not widely used for pleasurable purposes.
A number of less intrusive sexual devices, however, are in widespread use. For instance, RealTouch has created a “teledildonic” male masturbation device that synchronizes genital simulation in real time with whatever online porn is being viewed. Working in tandem with the activities occurring onscreen, the device warms itself up, lubricates, pulses, and grips. The process can also be engaged in with a live person—a loved one, a webcam performer, even a random stranger—who at their end stimulates a sensor-covered rod that transmits live signals across the digital universe to the receiving RealTouch device. In other words, people can give and receive virtual masturbation and oral sex via the Internet. Other digitally driven devices can be used to pleasure women in a similar fashion. And more sophisticated “stuff” is on its way.
There are also a wide variety of virtual sex games accessible on pretty much any digital device. In these adult-oriented games, participants create customized fantasy avatars (animated figures of themselves or others) and then use those avatars to participate in interactive online sexcapades. At least one company is working to make its 3D sex games compatible with the Xbox Kinect so users can “touch” the avatars. As of now, most virtual sex games target heterosexual males, but there are also games for gay men, straight women, lesbians, bisexuals, and the fetish/kink community. Some games allow users to essentially produce their own porn—choosing erotic scenarios, camera angles, musical scores, oversized body parts, you name it. Whatever it is that turns you on, you can make it happen right now online.
Also evolving is onscreen eye-tracking technology, where tiny monitors track a user’s eye movements as he or she scrolls through, reads, and otherwise views webpages and documents. Ostensibly this technology is intended for communications, game playing, and as a way for handicapped people to interact with technology and the world at large. For instance, when a user is reading a document and his or her eyes show that he or she has reached the bottom of the page, the device will bring up the next page. Eye tracking also lets digital devices glean information about users by tracking how many nanoseconds a person’s gaze lingers on one part of a screen versus another. Eventually, using this technology, pornographers will be able to figure out what it is that most profoundly arouses each person, automatically using that information to bring up images and videos that mirror the user’s deepest desires. In fact, it won’t even matter if the person is consciously aware of his or her arousal patterns, because the digital device will know.
Then we have the Muse and the iBrain—headband-like devices that measure intra-skull electrical activity, helping people to act through brainwaves alone. In time, using brain readers, people will be able to control any electronic device solely by thought. This means that a quadriplegic could potentially walk again using mechanical legs controlled by information sent from the headband. Sexually, of course, the possibilities are endless. With a headband and a willing partner, those separated by distance because of work or school (or sheer laziness) will be able to merely think about stimulating their special someone and, voilà, using any number of teledildonic devices, those thoughts may become action.
Technology doesn’t stop there, either. The KissPhone allows you to receive digital kisses, ostensibly from your wife, boyfriend, or grandmother. With KissPhones, the person on one end of the digital connection kisses his or her phone, and that device measures lip pressure, temperature, movement, and so on, and then transmits that information to the KissPhone at the other end, which reconstructs the kiss. It’s hardly a leap to envision a digitally accessed bank of movie star and porn performer kisses—and more—all available for a price.
If that’s not enough to rattle your chain, very soon people will be able to experience their entire partner’s body, not just his or her lips, in a tech-bed, as sheets and sleepwear are being designed with special fibers that produce sensory responses, allowing people to “feel” the sensations of partner intimacy and sex no matter how far away the other person might be. And should you become less aroused by the physical reality of your long-term partner’s looks, no problem, as developers are hard at work creating contact lenses that change the way that person looks to the viewer.
And what about robots? Already we have robots programmed to wash your hair, serve you tea, and mow your lawn. How much longer will it be before Rosie (the talking, emoting robotic maid from the cartoon The Jetsons) is built for real? And what happens when Rosie’s manufacturer decides she needs to look like a life-sized Barbie doll, complete with pliable breasts and a synthetic vagina? And if Rosie the Robot who looks like Barbie is personality programmed to act as if she adores you, then what? Could wedding bells be very far behind?
Consider the 2013 movie Her, the tale of Theodore, a lonely man in the final stages of a bitter divorce. Feeling down, he treats himself to the new OS1, the world’s first artificially intelligent operating system. Almost immediately, he finds himself enjoying the company and personality of Samantha, the voice behind his OS1, and he begins interacting with her on a personal level. Before he knows it, he and Samantha have fallen “in love.” As absurd as this plotline sounds, the love story is incredibly compelling and feels quite real to the viewer. And a real world version of this is likely closer than you may think.
Scientist David Levy, an internationally recognized expert on artificial intelligence, predicts that by 2050 technology will have progressed to the point where “humans will fall in love with robots, humans will marry robots, and humans will have sex with robots, all as ‘normal’ extensions of our feelings of love and sexual desire.”2 And Levy is hardly alone in his belief that humans can and soon will interact on a very real emotional level with artificial life forms. In fact, Japanese researchers have already shown that well-programmed therapy robots can get antisocial children to smile and to interact positively with both other children and their caregivers.3 So is falling in love with a sexually and emotionally attractive robot really so far-fetched? We think not.
BACK TO CURRENT REALITY
Certainly most digital technologies are not intended for sexual purposes. Yes, many are adapted for sex, but for the most part people rely on digital technology to communicate, to learn, to be entertained, to purchase goods, and to interact in healthy nonsexual ways. Unfortunately, some people can and do get lost in the endless pleasure that digital sexnologies can provide, over time losing control and becoming addicted.
CHAPTER ONE
SEX, TECH, AND ADDICTION
In those rare times lately when I sit back and take stock of myself, I can see that I’m spending hour after hour, evenings and weekends, just sitting around staring at porn. Instead of actually having “a life,” I’ve lost precious hours, days, weeks, months, and even years to isolation and loneliness.
