Robotic sex workers!

[Guest Prufrock Cummings]

If I was still a teenager, I be like "sign me up, send me an army of sexbots". There would be no question.

 

But today, nothing beats a soft naked hug and feeling nipple, breasts, tummy pressed against you and heartbeats touching.

 

Yowza!

[Guest *Ste***cque**]

I have no interest in a sex bot, regardless of how sophisticated it becomes. A sex toy provides friction, and a partner provides intimacy. If you want friction, you have a host of options from household items to high tech devices. If you crave intimacy, there is no substitute for a warm, eager, generous partner.

 

My 2 cents

 

Give it time. They could program all that caring stuff. Lol.

Many already prefer texting, emailing, face booking, etc to the real thing (face to face, ear to ear). Virtual porn and sex bots are on the horizon, though I too think it is sad where we are headed if we keep this up.

P.s. Check out EM Forster "The Machine" excerpt in the latest issue of philosophy now magazine.

[waterat 20911]

There was an item on CBC the other day about a new virtual reality headset being sold by, I think, google. Anyway apparently porn scenarios are potentially one of the big markets for VR!

 

All this just makes me think of the Woody Allen movie Sleeper:

 

And the Orb in the following clip. lol

[Phaedrus 209521]

There was an item on CBC the other day about a new virtual reality headset being sold by, I think, google. Anyway apparently porn scenarios are potentially one of the big markets for VR!

 

It's already here.

 

http://venturebeat.com/2016/03/23/hands-on-pornhub-vr/

[loopie 15358]

I remember people saying they would never need a cell phone, they would never shop online, and that internet matchmaking is only for losers. Actually, people said the whole internet was only for nerds. Technology advances to new frontiers pretty fast.

 

Do you still rent your videos from a store, or have you switched to streaming? Do you still go into a bank and talk to a teller to do your banking, or do you do it all online?

 

From my experience, two things will always win out: ease and reliability.

 

I would tend to think most of the men who turned to escorting had conventional dating methods available to them. But they probably started seeing escorts for reasons that relate to ease and reliability. It's easier and they consistently get a better result.

 

People all say they like the personal touch, but from my experience, their actions indicate the opposite. They ditch the smaller ma and pa independent shops in favour of the faceless less personal big box stores; and then they ditch the big box stores in favour of online shopping so they don't have to look at other people at all.

[Phaedrus 209521]

People all say they like the personal touch, but from my experience, their actions indicate the opposite. They ditch the smaller ma and pa independent shops in favour of the faceless less personal big box stores; and then they ditch the big box stores in favour of online shopping so they don't have to look at other people at all.

 

People do like the personal touch... but they like low prices more. They also like convenience. That's what drives this.

 

However, that's only of limited use when talking about this industry. When considering who to go and see, there are many considerations other than the purely financial. If I buy a book I get the same thing wherever I buy it; if I spend an hour with someone then I'm looking at very different experiences, even when choosing between people who may offer the same set of services.

[Guest *Ste***cque**]

Good point, Phaedrus. I forgot about cheapness. People will drive all over town wasting gas and time to get cauliflower for a buck or 2 less.

 

Still, I do think Loopie's point is worth repeating that many don't seem to want as much personal touch in their day to day interactions as it is too time consuming, and this is not always due to price. People buy online vs big box stores not solely to save a dollar but because they can also do so in their pj's and not have to deal with people and crowds. It's easier to text, email or Facebook as a primary way of communicating now. Calling someone is seen as a nuisance to many, and God forbid if you do a drop by. Hand written Thank you cards are passé given emails' convenience. Soon cursive writing will be used as code.

 

How does this trend translate to this industry? Just like many here adapted, preferring escorts over affairs, how long before we prefer sexbots offering "GFE" over escorts? Hopefully I will be long gone.

 

Change happens gradually, but there is a movement towards less physical interaction with others, in my observations. Whether it's purposeful or just a by product of technology, I'm not sure. The medium is the message and beware the message.

[Regent 35404]

Change happens gradually, but there is a movement towards less physical interaction with others, in my observations. Whether it's purposeful or just a by product of technology, I'm not sure. The medium is the message and beware the message.

 

I disagree with this framing. I think there's a movement toward being more deliberate and choosey about our interactions with others, rather than avoiding them all together.

 

People may opt to shop online from the comfort of home rather than deal with interacting with strangers at the mall, but for many people, shopping is about getting a certain product into their hands. Human interactions in shopping are at best neutral, and at worst something annoying to be endured.

 

Today we have more options than ever before for ways to engage with others, and while many decry how people are always looking at their cell phones, I think that facilitating interactions with other people is one of the biggest uses of technology these days.

 

I think we are and will continue to see the same trends with how technology interacts with sexuality. There's an unprecedented amount easily accessible porn for every taste out there, and an amazing variety of sex toys for all genders and bodies. We have more options than ever before for getting sexual pleasure without human interactions.

 

Yet many people are still choosing to interact with a live human, be it by seeing an escort, phone sex, or paying for live cam shows. People are not, en mass, abandoning human interaction, just changing up and evolving the ways we get it.

 

I think we're very far away from truly life-like sex robots (we're still solidly in the uncanny valley), and I think that when technology does reach the point where it can mimic human appearance and behaviour well enough to be arousing rather than off-putting (for the majority), rather than using it to avoid human interactions, we're going to see it used largely to facilitate interactions from a distance. For some that may be connecting with a long distance romantic partner, for others, interacting with a remote sex worker. But I don't think that interactions with technology will ever supplant or satisfy our desires for human interaction, which seems to be a majority motivator for people to spend the money seeing a sex worker vs just staying home and rubbing one with some high quality sex toys and porn.

[Guest *Ste***cque**]

Thanks for your comments, Regent. Technology does provide us with many more ways to "facilitate interactions", no argument there. Those interactions though, are typically arms length, Facebook, email , text, Twitter, all from the comfort of your home and those can't replace the warmth of physically being together.

We are lazy and if we have a choice between writing a hand written note or using email, the easier way wins out, imo. We can't even wait in a Starbucks line up, we have to pre order and pay with our smartphone so we can just pick it up without dealing with anyone! We are apparently so busy. We'd sooner post a selfie on FB of our vacation than get in our car and drive to a friends house to chat about the trip like we used to do, because it's more convenient. Amazon became one of the biggest retailers in the world in a very short time for a reason. Some would sooner buy sex than bother with the hassles of a girlfriend or mistress. I could go on but I think it's fair to suggest we are moving away from face to face get togethers and more towards "facilitating interactions", to use your phrase. Of course, we're not going to stop seeing people tomorrow.

We're not going to have robots everywhere in the very near future but i would sooner invest my future money in a sexbot manufacturer than say, a travel agency.

I hope I'm wrong but things would have to reverse to see a major shift towards more people deciding to meet physically than in some antiseptic virtual world online as we head into the future. Before you know it, more and more human interactions will be viewed as something to be "endured" rather than embraced

[loopie 15358]

Regent makes some interesting points. I think the idea of a sexbot that is remote controlled by a real person sounds like a very likely thing. And I also agree that robots that are convincingly real in appearance and behaviour won't be arriving tomorrow.

 

Steve McQueen and I are on the same page. Technology empowers the user. That's nice and all. But you end up with users who are used to getting what they want, whenever they want it, however they want it. It doesn't breed compromise, communication, patience and other things that make relationships work. It breeds entitlement and high expectations.