Originally published in The Pioneer - circa 1993-4.
In today's world, sex and technology make generally un-wholesome bedfellows. If you're the kinky sort, you can make love to, or with machines; if you staid enough to restrict your urges to your fellow species, you can make do with the disembodied services of telephone sex or stare at pre-programmed images on movie or video screens. Understandably, most of us feel a shade disinclined to go hi-tech and sex is generally accomplished in close confines in a manner easily recognizable to our earliest ancestors, perhaps even to animals.
Hang on though, the portents appear brighter. MTV addicts may have seen a trailer of the future in the Aerosmith video Amazing and the naughty sizzler makes ‘teledildonics’ or long-distance inter-personal sex appear simplicity itself. The trick will perhaps be in dressing for the occasion: you will need an intimate, snug and transparent bodysuit meshed with tiny tactile detectors coupled to vibrators of varying degrees of hardness that will be able to transmit a realistic sense of ‘touch’ and ‘feel’. You will then need to top yourself with an HMD (head-mounted display), don sensor-webbed gloves and you'll be ready to copulate in cyberspace. Dial your partner's telephone number, enter the computer password and you'll soon be immersed in VR (virtual reality), a life-like but totally artificial representation of your bodies in cyberspace where you can whisper in her ear or bite it or do anything else and those detectors in your bodysuit will be triggered at just the right frequency and sequence to convey just the right scratch and squeeze you prefer.
‘Smart skin’ aided intercontinental sex will be as easy as that in a world encompassing relatives of Aldous Huxley's ‘feelies’. But wait, how long before we can fast-forward into the age of these not-so-innocuous telephone connections and portable telediddlers? Well, perhaps the middle-aged and the elderly will have to resign themselves to making the best of available technologies, but the young can take heart. Computational load capacities will doubtlessly expand in the future and the promise of fiber-optic networks webbing the earth should occlude any hitches concerning the high bandwidth that tactile telepresence requires. The spoilsports at the moment are the sense receptors that will require myriad computer calculations to duplicate the minutest nuances and emotions of the human body. Still, the fantasy continues to inch towards verity.
Before that, however, a look backwards and a definition. Sci-fi writer Willian Gibson who coined the term cyberspace in his 1984 novel Neuromancer described it thus: ‘Cyberspace -- a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators in every nation by children being taught mathematical concepts...a graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system’. It means a whole new artificial world that exists only in our collective consciousness and within our computers. A communications revolution.
Its deliciously homebrewed story connects with the PC revolution and networking, a phenomena that we indubitably owe to the hordes of amateur computer ‘hackers’ who diligently, if sometimes mischievously, found ways of breaking into other people's computers, thus creating the earlier instances of cyberspace. As with all pioneers, the activities of these ‘hackers’ (whose fame was initially spread by the movie War Games) were not viewed very kindly by the established authorities who found their computer systems infested with unauthorized accessors and the FBI believing them to be an advanced crime ring, often swooped on the ‘hackers’, seizing every bit of electronic equipment they could lay their hands on.
However, with time and demonstrations of manifold utility in everything from telecommunications to toys (indeed, video games experts and Hollywood deserve special place in the story), cyberspace has gradually ceased to be the derelict frontier and its whiz-kid cowboys now strut their stuff in some of the most gilt-edged laboratories in the world.
Virtual reality adds a dimensional doorway to cyberspace. In this three-dimensional world, the user does not merely peer at a fixed perspective through a screen, as in the two-dimensional world of ‘simulators’ used to train pilots, but can instead, immerse himself in the artificial world within the screen and use a gesture to remold it. If this sounds abstruse, imagine that you're a gifted architect adept at envisioning complex three-dimensional structures which you cannot possibly illustrate for your clients except via simulacrums like models or diagrams. Factors like seismic stress or acoustics beat even your skilled mental techniques and your clients often remain vague till much work has been done on the actual building. Here virtual reality offers the possibility of creating ‘architectural walkways’, meaning that you can fit the entire building into a computer screen, and then entering it observe it from any angle, or better still, enter any of the rooms, open windows, rearrange the furniture and feel even intangibles like the sunlight on your body. If you don't like anything, you can change it right there.
Sounds convenient, but does it convince? Science writer Howard Rheingold has surveyed the terrain and he reports some amazing inventions from artificial reality labs across the world. At NASA he commandeered repair boats in ‘virtual outer space’; in Japan he had an eerie out-of-body sensation watching himself through the eyes of a telerobot; at Cambridge, Massachusetts he ran his fingertips over ‘virtual sand paper’ by means of a texture-sensing joy- stick and watched scientists create animated creatures that will live in tomorrow's semi-sentient virtual worlds; and in arty France he fulfilled the ultimate ambition of every armchair musician -- he moved his hands in empty space as if playing ‘air violin’ and presto, the glove covering his hand transmitted the actual sensation of drawing a bow against a taut violin string.
And thus the line towards ‘teledildonics’ continues to be drawn: artificial intelligence no longer threatens to make humans redundant but instead appears to augur human intelligence amplification. We may indeed be on the brink of a unique historical opportunity as the high bandwidth networks of the 1990s and beyond link billions of homes and unprecedented cyberspace opens up for colonization. Detractors will have qualms about ‘electronic LSD’ -- potentially addictive 'sensory’ experiences that may make reality pale in comparison -- and more seriously about the uncontrolled, chaotic nature of cyberspace that even today includes inter-cultural, multinational networks ranging in size from amateur bulletin board systems in high-school students' bedrooms to the mother of them all, the Internet.
But we need to view retrospectively how every change in technology, from the earliest civilizations to our very own steam engines to TV and even our earlier generation computers, has enriched our lives and in the process expanded far beyond the expectations of their inventors. Cyber- space should turn out to be a medium of great social power. Infrastructure and even belief systems are likely to cluster around it. As a brand new communications network reaches its apogee, we need to perhaps remind ourselves of McLuhan's prophesy of an altered ratio between senses and brance ourselves accordingly. Alternatively fall prey to making love in cyberspace and never ever being able to come of it.
In today's world, sex and technology make generally un-wholesome bedfellows. If you're the kinky sort, you can make love to, or with machines; if you staid enough to restrict your urges to your fellow species, you can make do with the disembodied services of telephone sex or stare at pre-programmed images on movie or video screens. Understandably, most of us feel a shade disinclined to go hi-tech and sex is generally accomplished in close confines in a manner easily recognizable to our earliest ancestors, perhaps even to animals.
Hang on though, the portents appear brighter. MTV addicts may have seen a trailer of the future in the Aerosmith video Amazing and the naughty sizzler makes ‘teledildonics’ or long-distance inter-personal sex appear simplicity itself. The trick will perhaps be in dressing for the occasion: you will need an intimate, snug and transparent bodysuit meshed with tiny tactile detectors coupled to vibrators of varying degrees of hardness that will be able to transmit a realistic sense of ‘touch’ and ‘feel’. You will then need to top yourself with an HMD (head-mounted display), don sensor-webbed gloves and you'll be ready to copulate in cyberspace. Dial your partner's telephone number, enter the computer password and you'll soon be immersed in VR (virtual reality), a life-like but totally artificial representation of your bodies in cyberspace where you can whisper in her ear or bite it or do anything else and those detectors in your bodysuit will be triggered at just the right frequency and sequence to convey just the right scratch and squeeze you prefer.
‘Smart skin’ aided intercontinental sex will be as easy as that in a world encompassing relatives of Aldous Huxley's ‘feelies’. But wait, how long before we can fast-forward into the age of these not-so-innocuous telephone connections and portable telediddlers? Well, perhaps the middle-aged and the elderly will have to resign themselves to making the best of available technologies, but the young can take heart. Computational load capacities will doubtlessly expand in the future and the promise of fiber-optic networks webbing the earth should occlude any hitches concerning the high bandwidth that tactile telepresence requires. The spoilsports at the moment are the sense receptors that will require myriad computer calculations to duplicate the minutest nuances and emotions of the human body. Still, the fantasy continues to inch towards verity.
Before that, however, a look backwards and a definition. Sci-fi writer Willian Gibson who coined the term cyberspace in his 1984 novel Neuromancer described it thus: ‘Cyberspace -- a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators in every nation by children being taught mathematical concepts...a graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system’. It means a whole new artificial world that exists only in our collective consciousness and within our computers. A communications revolution.
Its deliciously homebrewed story connects with the PC revolution and networking, a phenomena that we indubitably owe to the hordes of amateur computer ‘hackers’ who diligently, if sometimes mischievously, found ways of breaking into other people's computers, thus creating the earlier instances of cyberspace. As with all pioneers, the activities of these ‘hackers’ (whose fame was initially spread by the movie War Games) were not viewed very kindly by the established authorities who found their computer systems infested with unauthorized accessors and the FBI believing them to be an advanced crime ring, often swooped on the ‘hackers’, seizing every bit of electronic equipment they could lay their hands on.
However, with time and demonstrations of manifold utility in everything from telecommunications to toys (indeed, video games experts and Hollywood deserve special place in the story), cyberspace has gradually ceased to be the derelict frontier and its whiz-kid cowboys now strut their stuff in some of the most gilt-edged laboratories in the world.
Virtual reality adds a dimensional doorway to cyberspace. In this three-dimensional world, the user does not merely peer at a fixed perspective through a screen, as in the two-dimensional world of ‘simulators’ used to train pilots, but can instead, immerse himself in the artificial world within the screen and use a gesture to remold it. If this sounds abstruse, imagine that you're a gifted architect adept at envisioning complex three-dimensional structures which you cannot possibly illustrate for your clients except via simulacrums like models or diagrams. Factors like seismic stress or acoustics beat even your skilled mental techniques and your clients often remain vague till much work has been done on the actual building. Here virtual reality offers the possibility of creating ‘architectural walkways’, meaning that you can fit the entire building into a computer screen, and then entering it observe it from any angle, or better still, enter any of the rooms, open windows, rearrange the furniture and feel even intangibles like the sunlight on your body. If you don't like anything, you can change it right there.
Sounds convenient, but does it convince? Science writer Howard Rheingold has surveyed the terrain and he reports some amazing inventions from artificial reality labs across the world. At NASA he commandeered repair boats in ‘virtual outer space’; in Japan he had an eerie out-of-body sensation watching himself through the eyes of a telerobot; at Cambridge, Massachusetts he ran his fingertips over ‘virtual sand paper’ by means of a texture-sensing joy- stick and watched scientists create animated creatures that will live in tomorrow's semi-sentient virtual worlds; and in arty France he fulfilled the ultimate ambition of every armchair musician -- he moved his hands in empty space as if playing ‘air violin’ and presto, the glove covering his hand transmitted the actual sensation of drawing a bow against a taut violin string.
And thus the line towards ‘teledildonics’ continues to be drawn: artificial intelligence no longer threatens to make humans redundant but instead appears to augur human intelligence amplification. We may indeed be on the brink of a unique historical opportunity as the high bandwidth networks of the 1990s and beyond link billions of homes and unprecedented cyberspace opens up for colonization. Detractors will have qualms about ‘electronic LSD’ -- potentially addictive 'sensory’ experiences that may make reality pale in comparison -- and more seriously about the uncontrolled, chaotic nature of cyberspace that even today includes inter-cultural, multinational networks ranging in size from amateur bulletin board systems in high-school students' bedrooms to the mother of them all, the Internet.
But we need to view retrospectively how every change in technology, from the earliest civilizations to our very own steam engines to TV and even our earlier generation computers, has enriched our lives and in the process expanded far beyond the expectations of their inventors. Cyber- space should turn out to be a medium of great social power. Infrastructure and even belief systems are likely to cluster around it. As a brand new communications network reaches its apogee, we need to perhaps remind ourselves of McLuhan's prophesy of an altered ratio between senses and brance ourselves accordingly. Alternatively fall prey to making love in cyberspace and never ever being able to come of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment