Robo-Sex

[+ Lucky]

Many of us have hired escorts, only to find that the sex was not very exciting; perhaps the escort just going through the motions like some robot. Well, in these days of outsourcing, maybe we will soon be able to hire (or buy) a robot to take the place of those spunky lads who keep these pages full.

 

So it was with some trepidation that I saw a book review in yesterday's NY Times. The subject, apparently, is much further in development than I had thought!

 

Robo Love

LOVE AND SEX WITH ROBOTS

 

The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships.

 

By David Levy.

Illustrated. 334 pp. Harper/HarperCollins Publishers. $24.95.

 

 

By ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG

Published: December 2, 2007

A few months ago I wrote a magazine article about scientists who are building robots capable of a rudimentary form of sociability. As part of my research, I spent a few days at the humanoid robotics laboratory at M.I.T. And I admit: I developed a little crush on one of the robots. The object of my affection was Domo, a man-size machine with a buff torso and big blue eyes, a cross between He-Man and the Chrysler Building; when it gripped my hand in its strong rubbery pincers I felt a kind of thrill. So I was primed for the basic premise of David Levy’s provocative new book, “Love and Sex With Robots”: that there will soon come a day when people fall in love with robots and want them for companions, friends, love objects and possibly even partners for sex and marriage.

 

That day is imminent, Levy writes, especially the sex part. By the middle of this century, he predicts, “love with robots will be as normal as love with other humans, while the number of sexual acts and lovemaking positions commonly practiced between humans will be extended, as robots teach more than is in all of the world’s published sex manuals combined.”

 

If this seems a bit much, hang on. Levy, an expert on artificial intelligence and the author of “Robots Unlimited,” builds his case gradually. He begins with what scientists know about why humans fall in love with other humans. There are 10 factors, he writes, including mystery, reciprocal liking, and readiness to enter a relationship. Why can’t these factors apply to robots, too? Even something as apparently human as “reciprocal liking” can be programmed into a robot’s behavior, and if it acts as if it likes you that’s often all that matters.

 

Next, Levy points out that we’re perfectly capable of falling in love with non-humans, including our pets, our teddy bears, our computers and our computerized pets (remember the Furby and Tamagotchi crazes a few years ago?). Once you realize how easy it is to think of your own laptop as a sympathetic friend, how much more difficult is it to imagine having fond feelings for a robot programmed to interact with you in exactly the way your heart desires?

 

Humans, Levy writes, are hard-wired to impute emotions onto anything with which we’re in intimate contact, to feel love for objects both animate and inanimate. And robots, he argues, might turn out to be even more lovable than some humans. By 2025 “at the latest,” he predicts, “artificial-emotion technologies” will allow robots to be more emotionally available than the typical American human male. “The idea that a robot could like you might at first seem a little creepy, but if that robot’s behavior is completely consistent with it liking you, then why should you doubt it?”

 

When it comes to the even creepier prospect of a robot wanting to have sex with you, Levy takes a similar step-by-step approach. First, he explores why people have sex with other people (for “pure pleasure,” “to express emotional closeness,” “because your partner wants to”). He then moves on to why we have sex with a range of artificial objects, from plain old white-bread vibrators to elaborate mechanical contraptions with names like the Thrillhammer and the Stallion XL. He begins with sex toys you hold in your own hand and progresses to ones you engage in with another person: telephone sex for starters, followed by dildonics (computer-controlled sex devices) and then remote-controlled “teledildonics.”

 

Robot sex already exists, sort of, in the form of sex dolls — generally slim, big-breasted females with pliable “cyberskin” and a fake heartbeat that increases as the doll mimics arousal. Levy helpfully includes the addresses for Web sites where such dolls can be purchased today for several thousand dollars each. He also writes about the “doll experience rooms” in many Korean hotels (25,000 won, or about $25 an hour), which sprang up after that country cracked down on prostitution in 2004. There was some debate over whether paying for sex with dolls was also illegal, but for now, according to Levy, the prostitution ban applies only to intercourse with other humans.

 

Throughout the book, Levy builds up his case almost clinically, as though he’s just trying to bring the reader up to speed on an inevitable social development. But despite my own brief robot crush, I would have appreciated a little ironic distance. Levy simply embraces the sexy robots in our future, whether they are a sensitive cybermale or an adoring female robot that is like “a Stepford wife, but without her level of built-in subservience.” But it isn’t the subservience that makes the uniform, unthinking, unblinking Stepford wives so unnerving; it’s the fact that they are — hello! — robots.

 

In making his case, Levy cites the gradual shift in the public view of what is acceptable in terms of sexual pairings. People used to be widely appalled by such variations as oral sex, masturbation and homosexuality, but today these practices are “widely regarded as thoroughly normal and as leading to fulfilling relationships and satisfactory sex lives.” All he wants is for us to open our minds a tiny bit more, and make room for the idea of having sex with the domestic robots that will soon be part of all our lives. In fact, he argues, the human/robot sex of the future promises to be better than most sex between humans is today.

 

Levy spends so much time laying out his logical arguments about how and why we will fall in love with robots that he gives short shrift to the bigger questions of whether we would really want to. I’d have liked a little less gee-whiz, and a little more examination about whether a sexbot in every home, a Kama Sutra on legs that never tires, never says no, and never has needs of its own is what we really want.

 

Robin Marantz Henig, a contributing writer for The Times Magazine, is the author, most recently, of “Pandora’s Baby: How the First Test Tube Babies Sparked the Reproductive Revolution.”

[+ glutes]

Didn't Woody Allen have an Orgazmitron back in the movie "Sleeper"?

[Lookin]

If I could get hold of a commando replicant like Rutger Hauer,

 

http://www.rutgerhauer.org/hotphotos/hotthumbs/hsup14a.jpg

 

 

or a spunky Master of the Universe like Dolph Lundgren,

 

http://www.momofreaksout.com/media/2/20061006-Lundgren.jpg

 

 

I might just give one of these cyborg-studs a tumble.

 

 

With my luck though he’d spend all day on his cell phone.

[+ Lucky]

With my luck, his batteries would run dry!

[Lookin]

That's not luck, my friend, that's determination!

[seaboy4hire]

BLAH! I can't speak for the rest but since I rarely like to use toys I don't think I could go for a robot taking a probe up the ol' poop shoot. Give me a real live human or give me nothing.

 

Hugs,

Greg

seaboy4hire@yahoo.com

http://seaboy4hire.tripod.com http://www.daddysreviews.com/newest.php?who=greg_seattle

http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/6707/lebec084a9ad147f620acd5ps8.jpg

[AdamSmith]

The future is here...

 

http://www.teledildonics.com/

 

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/commentary/sexdrive/2004/09/65064

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledildonics

 

http://www.slashdong.org/content/projects/freesex_network/freesex_the_ope.php

 

http://www.virtualworldlets.net/Worlds/Listings/VRInterfaces/Thrillhammer.jpg

 

http://www.virtualworldlets.net/Shop/ProductsDisplay/VRInterface.php?ID=20

[+ Lucky]

RE: Robo-Music AND Robo-Sex

 

And now you can have live music with your robo-sex:

 

Toyota Shows Violin-Playing Robot

By YURI KAGEYAMA, AP Business Writer

 

Thursday, December 6, 2007

 

 

 

(12-06) 08:17 PST TOKYO, Japan (AP) --

 

 

Compared to a virtuoso, its rendition was a trifle stilted and, well, robotic. But Toyota's new robot plays a pretty solid "Pomp and Circumstance" on the violin.

 

 

The 5-foot-tall all-white robot, shown Thursday, used its mechanical fingers to press the strings correctly and bowed with its other arm, coordinating the movements well.

 

 

Toyota Motor Corp. has already shown robots that roll around to work as guides and have fingers dexterous enough to play the trumpet.

 

 

Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe said robotics will be a core business for the company in coming years. Toyota will test out its robots at hospitals, Toyota-related facilities and other places starting next year, he said. And the company hopes to put what it calls "partner robots" to real use by 2010, he said.

 

 

"We want to create robots that are useful for people in everyday life," he told reporters at a Toyota showroom in Tokyo.

 

 

Watanabe and other company officials said robotics was a natural extension of the automaker's use of robots in manufacturing, as well the development of technology for autos related to artificial intelligence, such as sensors and pre-crash safety systems.

 

 

Watanabe presented a vision of the future in which wheelchair-like "mobility robots" — also displayed Thursday — would offer "bed-to-bed" services to people, including the elderly and the sick, just like cars take people "door-to-door."

 

 

In a demonstration, a man got on the mobility robot, a motorized two-wheeled chair, then scooted around. Toyota showed how the moving machine could go up and down slopes and go over bumps without upsetting the person sitting on the chair because the wheels could adjust to such changes.

 

 

The Japanese government has been recently pushing companies and researchers to make robotics a pillar of this nation's business.

 

 

Toyota, maker of the Prius hybrid and best-selling Camry sedan, has been a relative latecomer in robots compared to its domestic rival Honda Motor Co., as well as other companies, including Hitachi Ltd., Fujitsu Ltd. and NEC Corp.

 

 

Honda has been working on robots since 1986, recognizing the technology as critical for its future in delivering mobility for the future. It is showing the latest technology in its own robot — the Asimo humanoid — next week.

 

 

Asimo — which stands for Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility and is play on the Japanese word for "legs" — first became available for rental in 2000. It's considered one of the world's most advanced humanoids. Seen often at Honda and other events, it can walk, even jog, wave, avoid obstacles and carry on simple conversations.

 

 

The 51-inch-tall bubble-headed Asimo looks like a real-life child in a white space-suit, as it has grown smaller and lighter in size with innovations over the years.

 

 

Trying to one-up its rival, Toyota has been aggressively beefing up its robotics team. In August, it announced that it was teaming up with Sony Corp., which discontinued its Aibo dog-like robot last year, to develop an innovative, intelligent, single-seat vehicle.

 

 

Toyota said it is working with universities and its group companies to speed up robotics development, but ruled out a collaboration with Honda for the time being.

 

 

Toyota Executive Vice President Takeshi Uchiyamada said technology that Toyota has developed in industrial manufacturing and automotive engineering will "spiral up" into robots.

 

 

"We hope to create a robot that highlights Toyota's strengths," he said.

 

 

Also Thursday, the automaker showed its Robina robot, a legless robot-on-wheels, which has already been working as a guide at Toyota's showroom at its headquarters since earlier this year.

 

 

In the demonstration, Robina, which has a head shaped like a bobcut hairstyle, interacted smoothly with a person, including carrying on a simple dialogue. It also showed how it could sign its name in script holding a fat felt-tip pen with its three fingers.

 

 

"I am 120 centimeters tall and how much I weigh is a secret," the robot said clearly in a feminine voice. "I know a lot about the Prius."

 

 

Koji Endo, auto analyst with Credit Suisse in Tokyo, said it was still unclear whether Toyota's robotics will bear fruit as a real business. But he praised Toyota for trying to branch into new sectors, noting it's likely to produce innovations that will in the long run be a plus for its auto business.

 

 

Besides robots, Toyota has a housing operation and is carrying out research in biofuels. Honda is also expanding outside autos, including a jet business, and has long had a motorcycle unit.

[+ glutes]

RE: Robo-Music AND Robo-Sex

 

If it can play a violin, I guess it could play a ... organ!

 

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=071206141647.92lzyqx2&show_article=1&image=large

[+ glutes]

That robot is here Lucky!

 

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2803152/Worlds-first-sex-robot-revealed.html

[AdamSmith]

Not to mention:

 

http://www.realtouch.com/dispatcher/index

[MsGuy]

Licensing revenue from cyberdolls should be a nice source of retirement income for our more prominent escorts. Build that rep guys, there could be a big payday down the road.