April 17, 2006
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What if the Robot doesn't want to have sex with you?Experts ponder a future of new sex gizmos, robots
By Adam Tanner
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - When America's
top sex researchers gathered recently to discuss the next decade in
their field, some envisioned a future in which artificial sex partners
could cater to every fantasy."What is very likely to be present before 2016 would be a multi-sensual experience of virtual sex," said Julia Heiman, director of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction at Indiana University, Bloomington.
"There
is a possibility of developing erotic materials for yourself that would
allow you to create a partner of certain dimensions and qualities, the
partner saying certain things in that interaction, certain things
happening in that interaction.A
field dubbed "teledildonics" already allows people at two remote
computers to manipulate electronic devices such as a vibrator at the
other end for sexual purposes."People who use it are just blown away," said Steve Rhodes, president of Sinulate Entertainment,
which has sold thousands of Internet-connected sex devices over the
past three years. "This is not something that just the lunatic fringe
does."The Iraq war...was kind of a boom for our company.
Gina Lynn, who writes the "Sex Drive" column for Wired magazine, says she has used and enjoyed the Sinulator and says there is no reason to fear the technology.
"People
are still really afraid of...any sort of combination of sex and
technology and of the Internet," she said. "What people are missing
here is the point, which is the human connection that we are
facilitating through the technology."No one who is even inventing this stuff wants or even thinks that technology could ever replace human connection or sex.
Annie Sprinkle, a former adult film actress, prostitute and author of "Spectacular Sex," said teledildonics are a logical outgrowth of improvements in pleasure devices.
"Now
people use vibrators like mad and rightly so; the technology of sex
toys has vastly improved," she said. "The more options the better; I
mean it can never replace body to body."Some people will love it more than anything else and others won't be into it.
SEX WITH A PORN STAR
Entrepreneurs are also seeking to fuse explicit video imagery with real-life tactile sensation.
Brad Abram, president of XStream3D Multimedia, said his firm's "Virtually Jenna," an online game in which the player has sex with realistic cartoon of porn star Jenna Jameson, can link hardware devices following the action to genitalia.
"None
of the big publishers will probably venture in there so we could be
like the Hustler or the Playboy or whatever, the Penthouse of adult
gaming," the Vancouver, Canada-based Abram said. "Sex toys is a huge
business.His
service, without the hardware, costs $29.95 a month, and he said
several hundred thousand people have tried the online sex game to date.
He expects the hardware area of such simulations to grow rapidly.Carl DiSalvo, a doctoral candidate at Carnegie Mellon University's
School of Design, has helped design a robotic device that simulates the
warmth and feeling of a hug. He said such work could be expanded into
the realm of sex."That hardly seems to be difficult," he said. But "a realistic encounter is where the thing gets to be much more expensive.
Companies
such as realdoll.com sell very lifelike human-size sex dolls without
electronics for $6,500, not including $500 shipping. DiSalvo is
sceptical about the demand for such high-end devices, as is San Francisco sexologist Carol Queen."I
do find that a world full of people getting it on with you know,
perfect gizmos instead of each other has some sort of a post-Orwellian
kind of sense to it," she said. "I don't really think that most people
are going to want this.Others suspect the technology is also far off. "Right now they are having trouble making robots that just sweep floors," said Pepper Schwartz, a sociology professor at the University of Washington in Seattle and author of many books on sex.
"You
know, we're talking about a big jump from something saying 'You are so
sexy, I want you' to mimicking all the things that would create a
cyborg. We're not at the cyborg level yet.ALL IN THE MIND
Going
even a level further, other researchers say in decades to come advanced
devices will be able to stimulate the brain to create a sexual
experience without manipulating genitalia.Marvin
Minsky, a pioneer in the study of artificial intelligence dating back
to 1951, said such devices could either trigger an actual physical
response from the brain, or have the entire experience take place in
the mind with the sensation of sex -- but without the mess or risk of
sexually transmitted disease."It's
bound to happen ... and is not as far off as some people think,"
Minsky, a professor emeritus at MIT, said of direct brain manipulation.
"They are doing things with monkeys but it is not a big world-class
industry yet, so that could take 20-30 years."But
if the game (industry) people got involved in some underdeveloped
country that didn't have any laws against it, it could all happen twice
as fast.Some researchers warn that too much fantasy could prove adverse to everyday human interaction.
"There
is a great deal of pushing people out of social relations into a kind
of simulated relationship, which in fact decreases what is essential in
human life, which is sociability -- one's capacity to relate to other
people," said John Gagnon, a veteran researcher and author on many books on sexuality.
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