The modern world has a midas-touch on every discipline, in the vision of making life simple & convenient. Thanks to technology. Also, technology has accommodated ‘sexual realm’ or ‘pornography’ along its enhancement, like every other realm such as education, medical and finance. Sex & intimacy has also seen a consistent growth of its domain over the years, from the outbreak of porn printings to modern AI – Sex Robots. The sexual desire of humans gave birth to the $30 Billion worthy ‘Sex-Tech’ industry.
While, if you canvass about depicting this topic, such like ‘Is it necessary to talk about this?’ or feeling embarrassed about it, my personal suggestion will to know what’s happening around us and there is an inevitable need to take the subject as informational and debatable. No more hesitance.
Sexual Evolution: not just ‘Sex’
Before jumping into the body, speaking of ‘sex’ doesn’t mean essentially of the physical part of ‘having sex’. The foremost reason, why the topic being stigmatized is obsessing the word ‘sex’ with just ‘physical sex’. The field also involves orgasm, pleasure, emotion, intimacy, relationships, interactions, communicating with others, medical, crime, assaulting, sex trafficking and gender, which in whole are quite untended. So, speaking of ‘sex’ here literally means the bounded form of the above listed.
Humans in nature seek for intimacy, love and affection. When they find it difficult to seek so in reality, human mind obviously drifts towards the way of acquiring it. Technology & Inventories takes advantage here, in fulfilling this want of humans. We had already started allowing technology to touch our personal desires intentionally or unintentionally; for instance, having love & sex chats with google assistant, hike’s Natasha and so on. This quest for intimacy & companion in other modes, has its onset, back from 1520s even. How? Continue reading!
(To fetch a clean read, tech’s prevalence in sexual field is assorted as ‘before 21st century (2000)’ & ‘after 21st century’).
Before 21st Century
Earlier days, humans felt unsecured and hesitant to share their sexual desires to fellow people. While prowling for such desires, people got satiated via ‘printed pornographies’, that outstretched immensely, just within 100 years of the invention of printing presses in 1500s. Those escalations of sales of printed pornographies were the origin of evolution of pornography in the tech-world.
Later in 1844, when Charles Goodyear patented ‘condoms’, and marketed in 1850s & 1860s, it was the second industrial revolution, that abided in late 1800s introducing ‘mass production’, let condoms to be the rapid sold & prescribed product, inspite of controversies. German Military was the first to promote use of condoms to their soldiers to control the sexual diseases that affected a majority of soldiers.
The third instance of sex-tech happened in 1980s, at onsets of active sales of Video Cassette Recorder (VCR) in United States that coupled the sales of porn video cassettes too. VCRs were the ones, that introduced pornography into Indian Homes, at a time where ‘blue-film’ was considered taboo and hush-hush affair.
Late 1900s were also a peak time of circulation of sex-toys like dildos, vibrators and more. That’s how pornography gradually expelled relying on technological developments before 21st Century.
After 21st Century
Case after 21st century, involves not just porn, but also our love, intimacy and desire to communicate with others as a marketing opportunity by big-tech companies.
Well it be dating apps like tinder, social media apps like Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, technology keeps us alive. Further advancements like Alexa & Siri are the only companions for most of the people here. Even ourselves feel easy to ask clumsy things to google assistant or Natasha than to our friends / lover.
Reports convey that humans feel secured and roomy while communicating with chat-bots than with real people.
Recent prelation of sex-tech is AI-powered Sex Robots, a $15,000 companion that talks, learns, and never says NO. The female sex-robot called ‘Harmony’, being silicone-made conceptualize just as a real female and can hold a conversation, tell jokes and quote Shakespeare. She’ll remember your birthday, say XXX told me, what you like to eat, and the names of your brothers and sisters. She can hold a conversation about music, movies and books. And of course, Harmony will have sex with you whenever you want. Harmony is the culmination of 20 years’ work making sex dolls, and five years of robot research and development.
(Harmony, AI Sex-Robot)
Sophia was the first humanoid robot with granted citizenship from Saudi Arabia. Actor Will Smith have dated Sophia & told that he felt awkward of the incident.
Sex-Tech: Replace Humans?
The need of discussing it, relies on how technology may intervene the personal affairs or intimacies of humans. Nowadays, most of us get excited for virtual occurrences and get anxious in reality. This imposes a real problem, which requisitely must be concerned, when technology replaces humans. Sex-tech’s current approach of ‘Sex-robots’ can even impart a change in people’s sexual habits to get admired to toys just as they would to future / current partners. In fact, a blogging woman who dated a male robot revealed that it just felt like she was on a tinder date. And to an advantage, everything was in her control.
Since virtual assistants became our companion as of now, the years are not so far for people to switch over the mindset to date a robot.
The Sex-tech field lacks ethics & limits to intervene the humans’ personal life.
If that’s the case, will you date a robot?
References:
- https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/27/race-to-build-world-first-sex-robot
- www.youtube.com
- https://hivelife.com/future-of-sex-sextech/
- https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/17/emotion-ai-artificial-intelligence-mood-realeyes-amazon-facebook-emotient
- https://theprint.in/features/brandma/cds-dvds-killed-the-vcr-but-not-before-it-gave-indians-hollywood-porn-and-memories/250554/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_erotic_depictions#Printing
