From orgasmic frequencies to teledildonics hacks, technology uncovers the truth about ourselves.

“Everybody has a different orgasmic frequency,” explains Dr Trudy Barber as our conversation gets going. Apparently, these frequencies are so unique that they could be used to identify us, much in the same way as fingerprints.

The implications of that are quite significant. If we can learn to identify such frequencies, she says, the next step would be to start tweaking them, and orgasmic training could definitely become a thing in the future: “If you could technologise your responses in terms of Hertz and waves and frequencies, you could code it in and manipulate it like a synthesizer, accentuating sounds and bases and all the rest of it.”

Everybody has a different orgasmic frequency, and we could learn to manipulate it in future
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With a Doctorate in Computer Fetishism and Sexual Futurology, Trudy is certainly qualified to talk about such things. For the past 20 years she’s been investigating how people become intimate with technology, and is credited with creating one of the first immersive VR sex environments while still an undergraduate at Central Saint Martins in 1992.

For her PhD research, she embedded herself in a community of people who were using technology to explore their sexual identities, including several transgender and transvestite individuals from different countries. At the dawn of the modern Internet age, this community started buying medical equipment online, modifying it to suit their purposes, and attaching them to private servers which they built from scratch.

A MOHOO is a Massive Open Haptic Online Orgy
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“There was this one individual, a man, who would come into this room and attach/insert all these different customized devices to his body, everything from dildos to nipple rings. The others in the group would then log onto this private server from wherever they were, and remotely stimulate those different devices. It’s what I called a MOHOO – Massive Open Haptic Online Orgy.”

The most interesting aspect, Trudy found, was how this interaction directly affected the man’s identity. When he was in the MOHOO he perceived himself as a woman – Stephanie. It posed all sorts of questions around the relationship between sexuality, technologies, and the concept of the multi-mediated body. What they created was, in many ways, a precursor to the hybrid virtual-physical environments emerging now as Virtual Reality experiences.

Trudy Barber created one of the first immersive VR sex environments back in 1992
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“Back when I started people thought I was crazy, talking about how we were going to get intimate with each other and lose ourselves within those virtual worlds. Now it’s becoming mainstream. When we used to put the big VR headsets on we looked like aliens from some weird science fiction movie, but now it’s trendy to have your Cardboard or Oculus Rift. All these social experiences are now big business of course.”

Sex Toys are also big business. The industry is worth an estimated $15 Billion, and teledildonics is a burgeoning field. There are now even University-level courses on Industrial Design focusing specifically on the sector. Owning that type of object is no longer a “dirty little secret” for most people.

The Sex Toy industry is worth an estimated $15 Billion
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But fetishisation is not necessarily something you experience in a seedy Soho shop. Trudy is actually more interested in how we can have feelings of attachment and intimacy for our everyday technology gadgets. As an example she tells me how, after buying her new smartphone, she couldn’t “put the damn thing down”.

“Which phone is it?” I asked

 

“The Galaxy S7 Edge,” she replied

 

“Same as mine!”

My excitement instantly proved her theory: Not only do we connect with technology in this way, but we also make connections with others through our shared love of those objects.

How about taking our love of machines to the next level though, is sex with Robots on the cards? Trudy thinks so, but it’s a problematic field:

“You end up with this fear of the Frankenstein monster. ‘what if the technology goes wrong?’ Even now, people can get jealous of the voice on their partner’s TomTom. There are so many layers of engagement with what is artificial in comparison with what is real. And as the physicality of the teledildonics side of it cements that connection with Artificial Intelligence and Avatars, it makes it more believable. You’re well and truly into that uncanny valley”

People can get jealous of the voice on their partner's TomTom
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“Technology can enhance your sexuality, your perception of self, and your relationships, but at the same time as it enhances those things so brilliantly it can destroy other things too, there are equally valid arguments on both sides and it’s really interesting how one person’s pleasure turns out to be another’s element of disgust. It’s fascinating from a research perspective because it really leaves the human condition open to so much scrutiny and revelation. That’s why it scares people, because in a way it reveals too much of ourselves, to ourselves. They’re afraid they might actually like it.”

Sex reveals a lot of ourselves, to ourselves. That's why it's scary
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Technology can enhance your sexuality, your perception of self, and your relationships
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Trudy Barber is speaking at FutureFest this weekend a festival of ideas which will explore – among other things – the Future of Love with curator Ghislaine Boddington and trailblazers in the SexTech arena such as Cindy Gallop from Make Love Not Porn. Watch this space for further updates as Tech Trends will be there! #FutureFest16

The post The Techno-Sex Researcher Laying Bare the Human Condition appeared first on Tech Trends.

Every day, we send and receive a wealth of digital information through our bodies, is the next step full-blown symbiosis? Tech Trends explores some titillating possibilities.

We obsessively touch our phone screens, and are rewarded with a constant stream of data, audio and video content; Facial expressions and fingerprints serve to identify us; Fitness bands track our movements, our heart rate and how many hours of sleep we had last night.

We send and receive a wealth of digital information through our bodies
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But take that a step further and imagine having tiny implants which connect your internal responses, not only to machines, but plug in directly to the sensations of other people. It would, quite literally, take the concept of intimacy to a whole new level, creating a so-called ‘Internet of Bodies’ – an evocative phrase coined by Ghislaine Boddington several years ago.

Body technologies such as wearables and VR will gradually converge with our emotional selves
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“I’ve been working with ‘body technologies since the late 80s. Things like motion capture, robotics, wearables, virtual world and avatars.” she tells me “I’m particularly interested in exploring how technology can develop to complement us rather than being just a set of gizmos. I see a convergence over the next 10-15 years between technologies of the body and our emotional selves which are going to give us much deeper experiences and a more enhanced scenario for love, passion, joy and intimacy.”

Content woven into experiences to create symbiotic relationships between the virtual and the physical, between our real and projected online selves
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Ghislaine, who is Co-founder and Creative Director of design unit body>data>space, has been exploring the relationship between our “living, sweating bodies” and technology for over 20 years. This fascination comes in part from her background in dance and the performing arts, which gave her a deeper understanding of how crucial the concept of  ‘live presence’ is to communication. This year she is bringing that expertise to bear in curating the Future Love programme theme at FutureFest, a festival of future ideas organised by innovation charity Nesta.

Tele-intimacy places our bodies at the centre of digital interactions
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One of the themes that she is looking to explore during the event  is ‘hyper-enhanced sensuality’ and how we can create a sense of deeper attachment that to help us reach new levels of joy and passion. This concept of ‘tele-intimacy’ places our bodies at the centre of digital interactions, with content woven into experiences to create symbiotic relationships between the virtual and the physical, between our ‘real’ and our projected, online selves.

Virtual Reality holds the paradoxical promise of lifelike experiences without the need for physical presence
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Most adult VR content follows the well-established formula of male-centred pornography. In itself that is not a problem, but the broader picture is much more interesting
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Virtual Reality is, of course, part of that picture. It holds the paradoxical promise of lifelike experiences without the need for actual physical presence, which can be physically isolating, specially given the type of content that is currently predominant in the medium. The key, therefore, lies in producing alternative types of content that tackle issues around negative and objectified representations of women, moving away from violence and repression and towards more positive attitudes, such as embracing gender fluidity that recognizes the diversity of viewpoints and the variety of ways in which people perceive themselves, relate to others, and experiment with their identities. At the moment, instead of showcasing this broad range of possibilities, most adult VR content follows the well-established formula of male-centred pornography. In itself that is not a problem, but the broader picture is so much more interesting than that:

“We’re looking at things around skin, touch. All these ‘caress’ technologies. And also things like biofeedback related to your gaze, breath, muscle movement… These will all converge and link into virtual worlds and maybe with things like holograms so that we can meet with each other and be intimate whether we’re in the same room or at a distance. One of the problems with VR is that it can be physically isolating. What we really need to get to is a real digital skin-on-skin scenario and look at what gaze does to you, what eye contact there is, and how do you reach passion, joy and intimacy in these areas.”

What we really need to get to is a digital skin-on-skin scenario
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These technologies will enable us to augment our existence and enhance our sensuality in ways that are probably hard to imagine at this point. But Ghislaine paints a fascinating picture of a world where bodies will become digital interaction canvases; and if that doesn’t get you turned on about technology, I don’t know what will.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Connecting Bodies Through Tech appeared first on Tech Trends.