(2/3/14) There used to be a time where sex was all about the ooohs and ahhhs. Sorry to have to break the news, dear friends, but that’s old school. The new school is increasingly about 1s and 0s–and this binary trend shows no signs of slowing down. If anything, it’s gaining serious momentum towards the kind of “sex lives” comically foreshadowed in films like the Demolition Man.
It used to be that sex wasn’t rocket science, but those days are apparently gone as well as techo-wizzes, including an actual (albeit former) NASA scientist, are scurrying around at light speed to hatch whatever will be the next big thing (or at least to top whatever the big thing was last week). Trying to keep up with it all almost seems like a pointless exercise as the pace of sex-tech is snowballing out of control. It wasn’t really all that long ago that notions of “virtual sex” were limited by how fast a person could type with one hand. Later, but still not quite ancient history, it became more a matter of improving bandwidth to do away with choppy, pixelated webcams, but even that didn’t satisfy the mad inventors.
The latest generation of sex-tech-gear scoffs and mocks all of what has been before–and barely made it to the marketplace before already being obsolete. USB gizmos for interactive hanky panky titillated consumers briefly, but have already begun the slide in favor of wireless whoopie with real sensations. Stick THAT in your port! Next-generation web platforms, tech products with immersive sexual experiences and virtual environment technologies enabling ‘holodeck-style’ surroundings are not only here now, but quickly positioning to annihilate all previous forms of online social interaction. With a generation coming up who operate tablets better than they can magazines, it’s really only a matter of time before the lines between physical and virtual experiences are totally obliterated.
Cue Charlton Heston: “You maniaaaacs!”
Does this mean that the future of solving STDs could be as simple as religiously updating your anti-virus software? Will we see an explosion of cyber-adultery prosecutions? Is it just a matter of gigglebytes and fiberoptics before an actual date with Jessica Rabbit is possible? Will it be somewhere in between or even more perverse than anyone can currently imagine? Only time will tell. While we’re years off from the likes of Woody Allen’s Orgasmatron, it does seem pretty certain that it’s coming. The question is: What do YOU think it will look like?