Imagine when a machine can not only convince us of their intelligence, but attract us with it. Bladerunner gave us a glimpse in the 80s: sexy androids manipulating humans with their power to woo. Science fiction has always tackled the sticky subject of sexuality and technology. What about virtual reality? Think of The Big Lebowski: “Interactive erotic software. The wave of the future, Dude. 100% electronic!” ‘Exosex’, sex outside the biological body, could be simulated in virtuality, much like Second Life or Skype and other digital formats where sex is enhanced, extended, digitised, and synthetic. It would be more real than real – a hyper-real experience. One of the activities which we consider to be uniquely human is our relationship with sex. But as “human” evolves, what happens to sex? In the future, sex for procreation could be separated from sex for pleasure. What if future generations wanted to separate the practices altogether, trusting embryos to the controlled safety of test tubes? And if biological sex were suddenly divorced from its evolutionary function, how would such a shift change our societies? Polyamorism is predicted to become the norm. In Brave New World, a major character is reprimanded by her friends for not being promiscuous enough. After all, “everyone belongs to everyone else.” Huxley’s dystopia offered a critical perspective on how our values evolve with both our technology & society, and he knew that sexuality wasn’t static.

Thanks to sarah for this one.


References:
Gizmodo.com
Overcoming Bias

Image Credit:
Gizmodo.com

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 27th, 2010 at 3:58 pm and is filed under Digital, One to Ponder. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.