While an interesting thought experiment, I don’t expect this sort of robot to become wildly popular. Or, if they are popular, it will only be for a short window of time. Not because people don’t like the s3x, but because there will be a superior alternative.
I’m speaking of direct-to-the-brain virtual reality (like The Matrix). We are long way from a VR experience that feeds directly into the brain, but we’re also a long way from lifelike robots. Progress is being made on both fronts.
The reason I expect the VR to win is because (1) you would get it for any number of reasons, including professional ones – AutoCAD will be a million times more awesome in a VR, (2) software agents and characters can be changes or upgraded at marginal cost, compared to android agents with hardware, and (3) you get all the senses involved, including smell.
—————–
As for what this does to society, I expect it to be the most addictive drug the world has ever seen. China on opium will be nothing compared to this. Picture the crack epidemic x10,000, in every city and town across the world. We will be lucky if people can pull away from it long enough to get even civilization-necessary work (like growing food and electricity generation) done.
Twenty years ago, online mutual remote sexual interaction (known as “Remote Teledildonics,” I swear) was the coming…uh, the next big…oh, crap, you know what I mean. That obviously petered…oh, forget it!
Ranchers have been using sex toys for decades. They stick an electrode up a bull’s ass to extract semen.
Yeah? So what’s different from normal sex?
[did I just say that out loud?]
I’m sure there are already people in San Francisco who pay for just such services.
I expect the real use of a very good simulant will be for telepresence. Think of trysts from afar with your loved one; or dating web sites that get rather real; or a sex chat room where one especially skilled porn star rakes in a fortune doing a thousand guys at a time, risk free.
While an interesting thought experiment, I don’t expect this sort of robot to become wildly popular. Or, if they are popular, it will only be for a short window of time. Not because people don’t like the s3x, but because there will be a superior alternative.
I’m speaking of direct-to-the-brain virtual reality (like The Matrix). We are long way from a VR experience that feeds directly into the brain, but we’re also a long way from lifelike robots. Progress is being made on both fronts.
The reason I expect the VR to win is because (1) you would get it for any number of reasons, including professional ones – AutoCAD will be a million times more awesome in a VR, (2) software agents and characters can be changes or upgraded at marginal cost, compared to android agents with hardware, and (3) you get all the senses involved, including smell.
—————–
As for what this does to society, I expect it to be the most addictive drug the world has ever seen. China on opium will be nothing compared to this. Picture the crack epidemic x10,000, in every city and town across the world. We will be lucky if people can pull away from it long enough to get even civilization-necessary work (like growing food and electricity generation) done.
Twenty years ago, online mutual remote sexual interaction (known as “Remote Teledildonics,” I swear) was the coming…uh, the next big…oh, crap, you know what I mean. That obviously petered…oh, forget it!
Ranchers have been using sex toys for decades. They stick an electrode up a bull’s ass to extract semen.
Yeah? So what’s different from normal sex?
[did I just say that out loud?]
I’m sure there are already people in San Francisco who pay for just such services.
I expect the real use of a very good simulant will be for telepresence. Think of trysts from afar with your loved one; or dating web sites that get rather real; or a sex chat room where one especially skilled porn star rakes in a fortune doing a thousand guys at a time, risk free.