Wednesday, December 28, 2016
Love droids
A Californian company called RealDoll has announced it will be selling an artificially intelligent sex doll next year. If they’d put it on the market a month ago, I would have bought for the manager of the safari camp as a Christmas gift. His wife isn’t the jealous type and might have appreciated sharing her conjugal duties with a robot. If nothing else, it would have given her time to catch up on her bedtime reading.
RealDoll haven’t said what their AI-enhanced sex doll will be capable of doing. It’s not difficult to imagine what functions the typical customer would want, but I suspect these early models will be fairly limited. Maybe the dolls will just moan and wiggle their tongues. Mind you, that’s probably more than many human partners provide. Hef’s playmates have surely mastered the art of playing possum, with the aid of a sedative if necessary.
A bunch of academics recently held a conference in London to discuss the way ahead for human-robot couplings. One of the speakers was Dr David Levy, the author of a seminal work called Love and Sex with Robots, published in 2007. Maybe I should have read it before writing this post. On the other hand, it might have given me the yips. A highbrow British periodical described the book as follows:
David Levy's thesis, in this utterly fascinating, scholarly and rather uncomfortable book, is essentially that we'll fuck anything (which we knew), and that we love pretty much anything that looks as though it might love us; or, at least, is blank and malleable enough for us to project that idea upon.
Yet almost 10 years after publication, Dr Levy’s idyllic vision of tireless and technically proficient sex machines is a long way from fruition. At the end of the conference, a member of the audience summed up the current state of play:
“We can't agree what a robot is, we can't agree what sex is. We are almost sure that no sex robots currently exist. What we are developing is very crude and almost no-one wants it.”
This is the problem with most advances in technology – the big breakthroughs happen in unexpected places rather than where everyone wants them to. There’ll be intelligent kitchen appliances long before sex robots are a common bedroom accessory. Refrigerators will make sarcastic remarks when men fill them up with six packs. Washing machines will scold women who sit on them during the spin cycle. Once machines have intelligence, there’ll be no end of cheek from them.
I personally doubt that androids will ever possess the sexual characteristics of a biological entity. Living flesh has a certain texture that cannot be replicated by inorganic substances. The human butt cheeks, when spanked, emit a noise that is instantly recognisable and probably unique in the solar system. Instead of trying to make artificial humans, the sex toy industry should think about creating a device like the Orgasmatron. It was all action and no talk, which is want people want from machines.
Labels: artificial intelligence, orgasmatron, sex dolls, sex robot, spanking, technology
Wednesday, March 16, 2016
Virtually arousing
I wonder if virtual reality porn is going to be the next big thing for humans who hanker after hi-tech gadgets. The pastime involves putting on a big fat pair of goggles and watching videos stored in the memory. Apparently, the naked women don’t stay on a screen for you to admire at a distance, but walk right up to you, pouting and jiggling their jahoobies. I dare say there are naked men too for those who prefer beefcake and sausage. The first users of this gismo have been lavish in their praise:
“We tried virtual sex for the first time and it feels like we just lost our virginity again!” they exclaimed.
This looks like an impressive endorsement, but a comment from a more reflective guinea pig indicates the illusion was less than perfect:
“The scenes feature serious visual depth and three-dimensionality. My mind told me to reach out and touch, but my invisible arms were grabbing nothing but air.”
Not being able to feel the goodies is surely a major deficiency. And you can’t taste them either, unless you’re sucking on a rubber teat flavoured with essence of booby.
Call me a suspicious ape, but I don’t trust these early reviews. How do we know they weren’t sponsored by the manufacturer? Normally, I would have asked the manager of the safari camp for his opinion, but he is currently convalescing from a vasectomy operation and in no mood for such experiments. So I phoned my old circus buddy Smacker Ramrod and asked him to give it a try.
“If I used that device at home my wife would hammer my kneecaps with a rolling pin!” he protested.
“So why not use it outside the house?” I suggested.
“You mean in the street, where people could see the stiffy in my trousers?” he asked. “That might get me arrested. And wearing those goggles would allow any old pervert to walk right up and grope me. The really scary thing is that I might enjoy it.”
I had to admit these were valid objections, so I’ll just have to wait for an impartial review from a blogger I trust. Until then I shall reserve judgment, like a justice of the higher appellate court. But that won’t stop me discussing the broader implications, like a prophet of the masonic temple.
Virtually reality porn will have its human enthusiasts, but it’s not a perfect substitute for the real thing. Nor can it be enjoyed in a public place with making the participator looked like an utter nincompoop. Anyone so foolhardy should expect to have his picture taken by on-lookers while someone held a sign above his head with the word “pillock” written on it.
Hence it would most likely become a private bedroom pursuit, done as an aid to self-stimulation. The main cause for concern is that many humans might become completely dependent on it, like the ‘orgasmatron’ in the Woody Allen movie. If you can’t get yourself off without the help of a machine, you might as well marry a robot.
Labels: jahoobies, orgasmatron, porn, technology, virtual reality
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
The art of making crap
A correspondent draws my attention to a ground-breaking exhibit in Australia’s Museum of New Art. It is a device that mimics the mammalian digestive system by converting food into faeces. This poo-poo machine has been lauded for producing exquisitely malodorous turds which visitors can sniff at their leisure. Few of them are up to the challenge:
“It put me off because of the overwhelming assault on the senses,” declared Diane Malnic, a Sydney-based accountant.
Perhaps the senses of an accountant are rather too easy to overwhelm. An honest farmer, who knows the value of muck, might react more favourably. This machine wasn’t intended for namby-pamby city dwellers who have never fisted a four-legged beast.
The manager of the safari camp grinned facetiously when I told him about it.
“I always knew modern art was shit and now someone’s proved it!” he quipped.
That’s easy for him to say, but what does he know about art? The museum’s mission statement is to “shock, offend, inform and entertain” as if those were the relevant criteria. Frankly, I have my doubts. Watching Jerry Springer ticks all of those boxes, but not even an ignorant baboon would confuse that with art.
In my humble opinion, this turd-machine is a brilliant piece of technology rather than a work of art. Breaking down food, extracting the nutrients and shitting out the remnants is an amazing feat to perform mechanically. It makes one ponder about the true nature of food. Consider the following mathematical equations:
Shit = Food – Nutrients
therefore:
Food = Nutrients + Shit
therefore:
Food contains shit.
Is there a flaw in this logical proof? I sent an email to my friend Dicky Dawkins, who knows about these things, and he assured me that he wasn’t a shit-eater. Apparently, the excrement one expunges from the bowels acquires its shitty characteristics from the bacteria in the gut and other chemical processes. Making poo-poo is a mysterious and complex biological process, no less wondrous than the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly. Remember to feel awed the next time you have a dump.
Not all shit is the same, of course. In general, the most foul-smelling, disgusting excrement is produced by carnivorous creatures. I remember opening the door of a portable lavatory back in my circus days:
“Pooh!” I exclaimed. “Has one of the big cats been doing its business in here?”
“Sorry, GB, it was me,” said one of the female acrobats, blushing furiously. “I had steak for dinner last night.”
“Little girl make big stink!” I replied with an avuncular grin.
This incident taught me that the poo-poo of a pretty girl can be as vile and offensive as anything a hyena can produce. If you don’t want to make a stink in the bathroom, the only solution is to adopt the diet of a gorilla. Our dung is not much worse than Fresh Umbrian Clay with a hint of guacamole. But you’ll have to give up meat; there are no shortcuts in life.
Labels: Art, Poo-poo, technology, turds
