2014, Year of Synchronous Remote Haptics

I’ve been doing the wearable computing thing for quite a while now, as well as Brain Computer Interfaces.  I like to look at interaction extremely broadly, and I take digital enhancements of interpersonal relations extremely seriously.

I’ve remarked on some of the borderline silly wearable stuff, as well as the GoogleHype™ around the not-too-impressive Glass.

These are really pretty primitive compared to the hot stuff I’ve been seeing in research labs for years.  I’ve written before about the deep and interesting challenges in telematics. Adding haptics to telematic performance, we get somewhat disturbing possibilities such as Cheok’s students’ project from Singapore, and this MIT student project.

So, where exactly is all this going next?  Well, duh!  Sex is where we are going.

Let me make a prediction.  2014 will the year of teledildonics. It’s even in the NYT.  Sigh.  Nothing will ever be quite the same, as this catches on.

It’s been coming for decades, but now technology has finally caught up to desire:  it is now technically feasible to perform sex across the internet.  We already see a variety of products emerging, such as RealTouch, LovePalz, and FundaWear.

Disclaimer:  I have never tried these products, nor anything even similar.  I can’t give any personal recommendations here.  Nor do I endorse any specific use of such things.  I’d like to say, “don’t try this at home”, except, well, you might try them, and if you do, please do it at home.

The essential feature of this technology is (approximately) simultaneous remote haptic interfaces. These can can be dressed up with other stuff (video, audio, video games, playback, third-party coaching, crowdsourcing, heaven only knows).

If you want an investment idea, then I suggest you bet on dildonic interfaces for MMOGs.  Second Life should get a second wind from this, though I really don’t want to thing about augmentations of something like Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto.  But it’s going to happen, and in 2014.

You should also expect a “youtube” for sharing recorded sex sessions. We’re going to need new search and mining algorithms for this stuff. This should be interesting (as in “may you live in interesting times”).

There will also be at least one serious accident caused by an idiot doing his (could be a “her”, but I’ll bet ‘his”) dildonics while driving. Talk about distracted. The media will eat this up. Insurance companies and lawyers, take note.

I’m not sure how various laws apply to this activity.  Is this, or is this not touching? What jurisdiction even has jurisdiction?

I’m sure this tech will be popular.  I’m less sure what business models will be viable.  I am confident, though, that every conceivable business concept will be tried.

As a social scientist, I have to think about what this will mean for relationships.

There will be whole new classes of neuroses and relationship problems, that’s for sure.  New variations on cheating and stalking. There will be a new kind of “sort of first date”, as in we been “intimate” over the Internet for a long time, but now we have “Our First In Person Date”.  Boy, is that going to be interesting!  Potentially, one party might keep up the relationship after a breakup, relying on previously recorded interactions. Who owns those files, anyway?

Very, very interesting, from many points of view.

As an engineer, I have to think about failure modes.

I’m not sure exactly how this stuff works, but there are certainly some safety questions here.  Hello?  System crashes?  Off-by-one errors?  Thunder storms and power failures?   Wearing it in the shower? Wearing multiple, not-quite-compatible devices at the same time?  Heck, I can’t even think of all the things that need to be tested.

Internet connections are not very secure, are they?  So what happens if you get hacked?  I’m not sure I want my undershorts loaded with malware, thank you very much.  Nor do I want my personal, um, personal data, er, splashed, around the Internet.

It’s also kind of hard to tell who is really on the other end of the wire, isn’t it?  There is scope for quite a few messy situations here, when you discover that “she” isn’t who you thought, maybe not even human.  It could be anyone, anywhere on the net. Uh oh.

O brave new world,
That has such people in it! (The Tempest (V, i))