-Caveat Lector-
>From http://slashdot.org/features/99/03/09/1544207.shtml
Engineers, programmers and futurists believe that programmable robots
that provide sexual companionship are likely to be commonplace in
the 21st century, at more or less the same time as computers become able
to process information as quickly as the human brain. The implications
of tactile sexbots, likely to contain vibrators, sound systems and other
equipment, are as significant as they are unexamined.
If you thought the fight over the CDA was bad, wait till
Rev. Falwell and his many pious friends in Congress discover Sexbots.
For better or worse, computing might be breaking down another big wall.
Techno-futurists have a sorry record when it comes to predicting
technology and the future. Remember the intergalactic travel that was
the centerpiece of Disney's Tomorrowland? The magnetic hover cars,
cancer cures, and climate-control systems that were supposed to have
been long in place by the Millenium? And only a handful of technologists
imagined how big the Net would get.
But here's a futuristic vision that's a far surer and troubling bet than
e-sex: sexbots. For several years now, engineers and futurists have
been writing (quietly) in academic journals and other venues about the
intuitive computer-programmed robots - sexual companions that contain
vibrators to provide tactile stimulation and sounds systems to provide
love talk - that some researchers believe are likely to become
commonplace in the next century. A few years ago, these predictions
could have been brushed off as more digital hype, but computers
are obviously becoming more intelligent and intuitive, and are
fast processing information as rapidly as the human brain. Inventors and
futurists like Ray Kurzweil (author of The Age of Spiritual Machines),
are guaranteeing that computers will equal or surpass human intelligence
early in the 21st century. So sexbots not only don't seem far-fetched,
they seem likely.
The contemporary news media, odd in many ways, are never more so
than when it comes to their reticence to talk openly about sex (unless
it's Presidential). They talk about sex scandals and Viagra, but
the ordinary experience of sexuality is almost a taboo. The Net has
liberated sex from XXX-rated movie theaters and porn parlors - it's the
third biggest money-maker online, after e-trading and shopping. For
better or worse, it's hard to think of a bigger killer app for computing
and software than sexbots.
According to a computing engineer who asked not to be quoted, prototypes
of sexbots already exist in Japan. "I guarantee you," he e-mailed me,
"that within 25 years, programmable, digital sexbots will be in many, if
not most, American homes and apartments." The idea of sexbots will be
horrifying to many, for whom the very idea of mechanized, roboticized
human passion is beyond any Orwellian nightmare.
Mary Shelley, who warned in the novel "Frankenstein" about scientists
playing God, and the horrors of unthinking technology, would have
flipped-out over the very idea of sexbots. Yet for some people - the
lonely, the severely handicapped, the isolated - sexbots could be a
great relief and release. And for others - unhappy spouses, troubled
adolescents - digitalized, mechanized sexuality is an open invitation to
addiction or to avoiding problems of face-to-face human contact.
Robotic sex would also eliminate the emotional component of sex. Like
fertility drugs and cloning, this is the kind of technological issue in
urgent need of discussion and consideration, even though history
suggests it won't be thought about much at all in advance. Like the
drugs that give couples the option of having seven or eight children at
once, or the medical technology that prolongs life sometimes beyond
reason, sexbots, will simply be here one day, and we'll be on our own
when they appear. But sexbots are a techno-prediction that has the ring
of truth.
Writer Joel Snell predicted in l997 (he's quoted in Richard Rhodes new
book Visions of Technology) that robots providing sexual companionship
were likely to see widespread use in the future. Snell could foresee
the problems. Marriages might be damaged or destroyed if spouses choose
sex with sexbots over making love with their mates. Jealous lovers might
destroy sexbot rivals, or sue manufacturers for emotional damage. On
the other hand, Snell pointed out, people seeking clarity about their
sexual identities would have a safe, reliable way to experiment.
Heterosexuals might use same-sex sexbots to experiment with
homosexuality or bi-sexuality. Gay people might use other-sex sexbots to
try out heterosexuality. Predators with sexual addictions might
no longer prey on human beings. Given that people become addicted to
all sorts of pleasures from slot machines to e-mail, sexbot addiction
might be inevitable. Users could become obsessed by their ever-faithful,
willing-to-please sexbot lovers that never say no or get headaches, and
rearrange their lives to accommodate their addictions. Support groups
are inevitable. Or perhaps, Snell speculates, a new category of
sexuality might emerge among humans - the technovirgin, people who
find it simpler, perhaps even preferable, to have sex exclusively with
sexbots. This would avoid all the emotional and physical complications
of having sex with people. Like wondering if it was as good for them as
it was for you. Or as bad.
Intuitive and recognotion technologies are already changing computing,
from search engines to recognition software to voice recognition.
Sexbots would almost surely be programmed to be highly intuitive,
keeping track of what worked and what didn't. They would become better
sexual partners as they learned more about their human counterparts,
storing everything from gasps of pleasure to frequency of orgasm in
their memory banks. Every time they had sex with a human, it might get
better. Meanwhile, sexually-transmitted diseases might fall, along
with teen pregnancy, abortions, pedophilia, prostitution and Viagra
prescriptions. The divorce rate might plummet as well, since Sexbots
could keep marital partners happy. The affair itself might become
outmoded. Why take the risk when your sexbot is waiting to meet your
needs? Technology never works in predictable ways. The idea that
computing machines could take over the function of human passion is as
chilling as it is fascinating. But it's also almost totally unexplored.
Neo-Luddites will have a field day with the advent of digital or robotic
sex, as will parents, politicians, teachers, moral guardians. If local
communities flip out whenever Johnny logs onto the Playboy website, and
Congress twice passed blatantly unconstitutional Communications Decency
Acts to regulate "decent" speech online, how might they respond to the
idea of sexbots sold next to Imacs at Compusa? Sex is a hair-trigger
issue in American politics, and the idea of machines performing it
round-the-clock will rock some of the most powerful elements in society.
>From information to MP3's and Open Source software, computing and the
Internet is about freeing up ideas and information and giving individual
people more control over their own lives. It's logical that this
relentless empowerment would extend to experiences like sexuality.
Sexbots seem inevitable. But in a culture that refuses to think much
about either technology or sex, the one thing we do know is that we
won't be ready when they get here.
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