You can now get sexy thrills as you track the progress of your cryptocurrency investment. What a world we live in…

Bitcoin is having a hell of a ride (yes, this post is going to be full of innuendos, get over it) and now adult entertainment webcam platform CamSoda is taking that to a whole new level with the launch of BitCast.

Bitcoin is having a hell of a ride
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This new feature brings an entirely different sort of titillation to investors by pairing an interactive sex toy with the performance of major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin, increasing and decreasing the frequency of vibration accordingly: If the value of the currency goes up, the vibrating increases; and if the value goes down, the vibrating decreases. In other words, as the value of your investment fluctuates all over the place, so will your… well, you get the gist.

BitCast brings an entirely different sort of titillation to investors by pairing an interactive sex toy with the performance of major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin
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Since the beginning of the year the aggregate market cap of all cryptocurrencies has increased by more than 3,000%
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2017 has seen the value of cryptocurrency – most notably BitCoin – soaring beyond most people’s wildest expectations. Since the beginning of the year the aggregate market cap of all cryptocurrencies combined has increased by more than 3,000%.

And even though many experts argue this is the biggest bubble of our lifetime – and that’s saying a lot considering all the bubbles we’ve seen – every day more people are lured into getting in on that action.

“What has so many people captivated, aside from the fact that virtual currencies are largely unregulated and fraught with risk, is the daily volatility – the stratospheric price rises followed by meteoric price drops. With people constantly tracking their cryptocurrency investments, we saw an opportunity to offer them simultaneous sexual pleasure derived exclusively from price fluctuations,” says Daryn Parker, VP, CamSoda. “Now, with Bitcast, our fans can hook up their favorite interactive toy and literally get pleasure from their investments. So, essentially, as the price goes up, so too do your orgasms.”

To use the new platform, users simply need to go to BitCast and click on the cryptocurrency icon they want to track, then, click “play” and follow the instructions to sync the interactive sex toys, which include a series of penile, vaginal and anal toys. They can then sit back and enjoy the ROI.

2017 has seen the value of cryptocurrency - most notably BitCoin – soaring beyond most people’s wildest expectations
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Since being founded in 2014 CamSoda made a name for itself in pushing innovative and often tongue-in-cheek tech. It was the first adult entertainment webcam platform leveraging “Mobile-First” and has had many forays into Virtual reality including the CamSoda House, an interactive VR experience that allows users to broadcast live adult entertainment directly to their headsets.

Users can sit back and enjoy the ROI
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This isn’t their first venture in interactive sex toys either. Previously, they launched on-demand marketplaces that offers users a catalog of simulated blowjobs and virtual cunnilingus from renowned webcam models and amateurs, which many dubbed the “iTunes of Blowjobs” and “iTunes of Cunnilingus,” respectively. It remains to be seen whether their foray into the cryptocurrency will prove as popular, but now I really have seen everything.

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 on Twitter.

The post Does Bitcoin Turn You On? appeared first on Tech Trends.

BaDoinkVR is giving out 10,000 free sex toys for women wanting to explore their bodies and enjoy VR in a whole new way

And yes, before you ask, I did get one of those toys for myself. Here at Tech Trends we’re very strict in our policy of not recommending anything we’re not willing to try ourselves!

What Women Want is the newest instalment in BaDoinkVR’s Virtual Sexology series which – as the name suggests, is designed specifically with the female user in mind.

The idea is to use Virtual Reality tools to provide a hands-on approach to female sexual empowerment
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This is a virtual reality experience for sex education and therapy that aims bridge the gap between education and entertainment and help women enhance sexual pleasure and performance, both solo and with their partners.

The idea, explains Dinorah Hernandez, Director at BaDoinkVR, was to provide a much more hands-on approach to discovering female sexual empowerment:

“We’re striving to appeal to a large demographic of women that have been widely ignored by the adult industry, as we recognized that women tend to have different a mindset compared to men when it comes to adult VR,” she explained

Not only is the experience itself free to download, but BaDoinkVR is also giving away free companion sex toys to the first 10,000 women who request them on the site. The experience was designed “by women and for women,” with input from experts in the field such as AASECT certified sex therapist Dr. Holly Richmond, PhD, who helped to develop the content and exercises featured.

This is a virtual reality experience for sex education and therapy
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Dr. Richmond is a somatic psychologist who works with women, men and couples on relationship and sexuality issues. She uses somatic (body-based) principles to help uncover subconscious issues that contribute to clients’ primary concerns. Her treatment specialties include low and absent libido, desire discrepancies in couples, compulsivity issues with sex and pornography, recovery from sexual assault and abuse, alternative sexual lifestyles, and those working or who have worked in the adult industry.

“In my practice as a somatic psychologist and certified sex therapist, I place equal importance on the body and the mind. With sex, this is of utmost importance and VR gives us an even more direct channel to somatic manifestations of pleasure and sexual wellness,” says Dr. Richmond. “Virtual Sexology is a progressive concept that offers a wide-variety of positive sexual health applications in an informative and entertaining way,”. “Women’s desire and arousal are unique to men’s and extremely varied, so our approach with this endeavour was to explore not only what women want, but also how they want it.”

BaDoinkVR’s Virtual Sexology II promises to leverage those techniques to dive deep into the feminine process of arousal and desire, aided by a “suite of next-generation sex toys that aim to augment sexual activity and help women discover their pleasure zones.”

Now, since I do get pitched a lot of cutting-edge sex tech products, I’m very spoilt where it comes to sex toys. Which means that in all fairness I must point out that the Trinity Peanut Bullet Vibe one-touch control model offered is certainly not on the same league as the beautifully designed and tactile products from, say Dame or Miss on the Go. But, hey, it does the job, and gift horses and all that… As BaDoink says, “the motor may be small, but it packs enough to satisfy.”

Dr. Richmond uses somatic (body-based) principles to help uncover subconscious issues that contribute to clients' primary concerns
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What’s next for sex?

“I got involved with this project because I am working on a book about the future of sex, or more specifically, asking the question, ‘What’s next for sex?’” Dr. Richmond explains. “A large portion of the book will investigate VR porn and its positive clinical applications for sexual health. Of course I found BaDoink when I was researching industry leaders and reached out to them. After reviewing Virtual Sexology I, I was very curious about how the overall idea (combining education and entertainment) could translate for women’s sexual health in particular.”

It would be great if we could bring female pleasure out of the shadows
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“It would be great if we could bring female desire and pleasure out of the shadows, give it some light and offer solutions. Virtual Sexology II was written from a place of deep commitment to my clients, as well as wanting to help women in general get in touch with what they want, what they like, what they need. This is an exceptionally immersive way to help women conceptualize and feel good about their desire, and have the practical, hands-on tools to get it,” added Richmond.

Originally published on Future of Sex

VR Sex Therapy Series for Women Aims to Educate and Spark Their Unique Desires by @alicebonasio https://t.co/nl4XHxFaCP #VR

— FutureofSex (@FutureofSex) June 17, 2017

For companies looking to gain a competitive edge through technology, Tech Trends offers strategic Virtual Reality and Digital Transformation Consultancy services tailored to your brand.

Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation 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 on Twitter.

The post Is A Virtual Sexology Experience What Women Really Want? appeared first on Tech Trends.

There’s a plethora of sex toys out there, but as far as I can tell Miss on the Go is in a hybrid category of its own: Sure, it functions as a straightforward vibrator, but it also connects to a mobile app which turns it into a teledildonics device.

Then it effortlessly doubles up as a wearable Kegel exerciser that helps women locate their pelvic muscles, while pleasuring them at the same time.

I put it to Véronique Verreault – Miss On the Go (MOTG) Founder and CEO – that this seems like a classic case of having your cake and eating it too, and she laughs her agreement. “Why not?” she asks.

Verreault’s quest to create the ultimate sexual wellness wearable began while she was studying Management at University in 2014. She was looking for an outlet for her “entrepreneurial fire” as she puts it, and kept coming back to the idea of working with sex toys – which helped her get to know and feel happy with her body ever since she was a teenager. At first, however, the size of the industry and the taboo around it felt rather intimidating. In the end, though, her Eureka moment was inspired by the way she was able to do her favourite Kegel exercises discreetly, wherever she was.

“I had been regularly practicing those exercises, wearing my Ben Wa balls for many years, and absolutely loved it. I wore them when I went to work, while cleaning the house, you name it!” she recalls, saying she often tried to get her curious friends to try it out too.

Verreault’s quest to create the ultimate sexual wellness wearable began while she was studying Management at University in 2014
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“Don’t wait to have urinary incontinence, Darling! I was telling them about the benefits during sex, as you know… but not enough women do it. Then one day, I was sexting with my Kegel and I said that’s it. I thought ‘I need to create something.’”

That something turned out to be not only a sex toy and workout tool, but a connected app that made using the device a fun and social experience, turning your phone into a sort of sexual personal assistant. To do that, she had to not only secure investment and get her head around the complex logistics of running a tech start-up, but also overcome some considerable technical challenges.

 

“I wanted quality and we needed to start over and over to make sure it was meeting my expectations,” she recalls. “The Bluetooth antenna which hangs from the device needed a reliable connection, which is difficult when you throw things like water and metal into the mix. We needed to find a solution that was safe for the body and resistant enough for all the ladies out there to give it a proper workout.”

The main message she wants her product to convey is that confidence is incredibly sexy: “It’s not the short skirt or high heels that makes you sexy. It’s your attitude, your swag, you can have jogging pants and a pony tail and rock this grocery shopping! It’s the same with sex. Trust yourself, respect your body but don’t be shy about using sex toys to explore what feels good and have a healthy sex life,” she advises.

The main message the product conveys to women is that confidence is incredibly sexy
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It is appropriate, therefore, that the workout section in the MOTG app is called “Strong is the New Sexy”. This guides women through their Kegel workouts, with 10 cycles of 10 seconds each (5 seconds contraction with medium vibration, 5 seconds releasing contraction). Consistency is key, as the aim is to make women feel comfortable with the exercise, and contract without even noticing.

Once you invite a partner to play and they accept, you can exchange pictures and texts while they control the vibration on the device
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After downloading the app, users create a free account by choosing a username and password; connecting the device is a matter of turning it on and enabling Bluetooth on your phone to pair them, just as you would with a fitness band or pair of wireless headphones. The first time you use the app with the device you will also need to go into the settings to connect them, but overall it’s a very intuitive UI which makes the process straightforward.

In addition to the workouts, the app can also be used purely for fun, letting you either control it yourself by with the “My Own Pleasure” option, or handing over that control to other users, wherever they are in the world.

The fact that your profile remains anonymous not only encourages people–especially women–to experiment more
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The woman has full control over the experience at all times, as she sends out an invitation either to a specific person with the “I know who I want” option–this could be an existing partner who is traveling, for example —or to a complete stranger with the “mystery game.” The latter allows you to connect with other users based on Tinder-like criteria such as location, age, and preferences.

“The app lets you decide when you want to play. So honey, choose what you want. You want to play alone? Good! You want to play with someone? Good! As long as you’re good with your decision and confident about your choices, you’re good to go!” says Verreault

Sex with strangers? Yes, please!

The fact that your profile remains anonymous not only encourages people–especially women–to experiment more. But it’s also a big turn-on that their research uncovered, which places “stranger fantasy” as one of the top three the most popular amongst women (together with threesomes and lesbian sex).

Once you invite a partner to play and they accept, you can exchange pictures and texts while they control the vibration on the device. The whole experience is rated through a “pleasure bar” which indicates how satisfied the woman is by the interaction. So even though there is no physical stimulation in the bargain for, say, a distance boyfriend, that gamification can lead to some healthy competitive motivation.

Once you invite a partner to play and they accept, you can exchange pictures and texts while they control the vibration on the device. The whole experience is rated through a “pleasure bar” that indicates how satisfied the woman is by the interaction. So even though there is no physical stimulation in the bargain for, say, a long-distance boyfriend, that gamification can lead to some healthy competitive motivation.

Verreault clearly embodies the whole sex-positive mentality
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Keeping sex tech sex-positive

Verreault clearly embodies the whole sex-positive mentality, and is rightfully proud of what she’s achieved in the past three years. With no previous experience in tech, she managed not only to design and ship the MOTG device from scratch, but also develop the accompanying app and social platform, churning out some happy customers in the process.

She’s not resting on her laurels though. While the first version of the app is “fun,” she’s busy recruiting people to help her fulfill a list of improvements, “as long as Santa’s,” based on the extensive feedback from customers so far. And if her determination is anything to go by, it would seem–if you’ll excuse the pun–that the best is indeed yet to come.

This article originally appeared on Future of Sex 

Female #sextech entrepreneur shows ‘strong is the new sexy’ with @missvvsmystery Kegels sex toy and app system https://t.co/CUSCkEhM0V

— FutureofSex (@FutureofSex) May 4, 2017

For companies looking to gain a competitive edge through technology, Tech Trends offers strategic Virtual Reality and Digital Transformation Consultancy services tailored to your brand.

Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation 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 on Twitter.

The post Meet SexTech’s Answer to FitBit appeared first on Tech Trends.

Tech is supposed to be hip, but where it comes to sex, it’s surprisingly square. It’s one woman’s mission to change all that, and spare us no blushes.

“The three biggest tech disruption opportunities today are cannabis, Bitcoin and Sex.” But while money is flowing steadily into the first two – to the extent that VCs and start-ups in those sectors routinely lobby for regulatory change– Cindy Gallop tells me that the Sex Tech space which she pioneered remains taboo.

Sex Tech remains taboo
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We live in a supposedly liberal and forward-thinking age, yet where it comes to sex, repressed prudishness still rules supreme, and this makes investors nervous. So where apps like Yo and Wakey – which can safely be described as pointless – attract million-dollar investments, a platform to socialize sex with over 400 thousand engaged users and a plethora of monetization opportunities is something that VC firms won’t touch with a proverbial barge pole.

Where it comes to sex, repressed prudishness still rules supreme
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Cindy’s Make Love Not Porn launch was one of the most popular TED Talks in history, and not just because it included no fewer than 3 mentions of coming on one’s face. Over 1.6 million people have watched it since 2009, but in spite of near-universal enthusiasm for the concept, she has so far been bootstrapping the platform with only her own savings and support from one Angel investor.

MLNP has to constantly fight against blockers such as banks refusing them business accounts and PayPal not processing their payments. “My team and I fight a battle every day because every little piece of infrastructure that other start-ups take for granted, we can’t, as the small print says no adult content. So I realized very early on that I would have to pave my own way if I want to scale and grow this into the billion dollar venture I know it can be.”

I realized early on that I would have to pave my own way to scale this into a billion dollar venture
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Even with all the obstacles and no development resources, the bare-bones platform already monetizes content, regularly making four-figure payouts to its ‘stars’. There’s huge demand for expansion in areas such as educational content, fiction and commercial partnerships, but growth remains paralysed by lack of investment.

It’s infuriating, according to Gallop, “because it’s never about what the person you’re talking to thinks. It’s about the fear of what other people will think.” Time and again she’s had enthusiastic VCs approach her saying how much they loved the idea and saw its commercial potential, but felt unable to take it to their firms.

It’s about the fear of what other people will think
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Make Love Not Porn operates on a revenue sharing model, which means users get 50% of the “rental fee” of $5 per video. “That’s the diametric opposite of how the porn industry operates,” Gallop points out. “Whether you’re a newbie or the world’s biggest porn star, you only ever get paid by the scene, and that maxes out at about $2000. These people never see a penny from the vast revenue their videos generate, but I believe the business model of the future is that shared values plus shared action equals shared profit.”

Quite apart from the huge revenue streams that could be generated through content – both social/entertainment and educational, Gallop makes an exceedingly convincing case for the market potential of commercial partnerships, advertising and product placement. Hands down, it’s the most entertaining pitch I’ve ever heard, but quite apart from that, it’s a rock solid argument made by someone who, not to put too fine a point on it, really knows her shit. Gallop’s impressive resume includes decades of experience in the advertising industry, most recently as President of Bartle Bogle Hegarty.

Photo by Matthew Williams

She puts to me that, in spite of all the existing taboos and limitations, the current size of the sex toys and accessories market is worth an estimated $1B, and that’s without even going into content-connected teledildonics or the burgeoning field of VR, with all the possibilities that brings. If she succeeds in building MLNP into the platform she envisages, however, “we’re talking Trillions.” She assures me before launching into a typically not SFW story that drives home the point:

“A few months back LELO sent me this special edition black and gold TIANI couple’s massager,” she recalls. “So I open the box, look at this beautiful object, and I find myself thinking: how the fuck do you use this thing?”

 “So I think to myself: there’ll be instructions inside. But all I find is this one-pager that tells you how to charge it. Nothing about what goes where.”

Not one to give up easily, Gallop then turned to that universal source of enlightenment for the befuddled – YouTube – where she did find a video about the TIANI: “But because this is YouTube, what I’m presented with, is a video of what I call ‘Stepford Woman’, by which I mean a completely sanitised, whiter-than-white person holding the device and telling you how to use it. And I’m listening to her and going ‘what? So you put that inside and then the guy puts in his cock as well? How the fuck does that work?’ needless to say, my couple’s massager has never been used with any of my lovers. You don’t want to risk killing the mood with something going wrong.”

Bearing in mind that Gallop is a strong, confident, openly sexual woman who’s a huge fan of sex toys and own a whole bunch of them, what hope do the rest of us have of navigating through that particular minefield.

“It’s simply impossible to overstate the negative impact that our inability to talk honestly about sex has on the ability of every sex toy manufacturer out there to shift their product,” she agrees. “ But because our videos on MLNP are so reassuring in all sorts of ways – we celebrate normal bodies, normal hair, real penis sizes, real-world emotions – we also help to demystify and take the embarrassment factor away, so there’s a huge opportunity for product demonstration and communication.”

Last summer they piloted a collaboration with Refinery 29 to road test 5 bestselling sex toys on the MLNP community. Volunteers were picked from a diverse range of ethnicities, sexual orientation, singles, couples, and asked to video themselves using the product for the first time, with all the accidents, near-misses and laughs left in. It was the ultimate antidote to the Stepfordian YouTube experience that proved such a turn-off for Gallop.

Photo by ioulex

“That was a world first, people trying out sex toys on camera for the first time, and we got a brilliant response.” She recalls one woman who wrote to tell her that watching the user-generated demonstration made her feel comfortable to buy and use the toy where she never would have dared to before.

That was a world first, people trying out sex toys on camera
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But if you think that this potential for “demonstration and communication” stops at sex toys, think again. “There will be a specific area of the site where you can sell any perfectly ordinary household good or product as long as you integrate it, entertainingly, in a real-world sex scenario. The chair they’re using, the necklace she’s wearing, the clothes they’re taking off, the beer he’s drinking. For brands brave enough to do this the viral engagement possibilities are enormous.”

Sex is an area where research and data are badly needed
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As the platform scales there is also huge potential for data to be developed into additional revenue streams, aggregating real world, real time human sexual behaviour information in unprecedented ways. “Sex is an area where research and data are badly needed, yet it’s the most data-free area of research going. It’s also the one area where you’ll find the widest possible gap between what people say and what they actually do.”

“When my angel investor asked me several years ago what our exit strategy was, I said to him that it didn’t yet exist; we were going to create it. Because when we achieve our mission of socializing sex, 10 years from now company X will buy us for a shit-ton of money who wouldn’t even dream of it now.”

It might seem far-fetched to think about a company like Facebook eventually sharing curated social sex videos. This is, after all, a platform that routinely takes down pictures of women breastfeeding their babies. But things can change very rapidly in the social media world. Think about how far the goalposts of what is considered acceptable or ‘normal’ content have already shifted. We might have become rather jaded to it these days, but even your average person from the early 90s would probably be weirded out by most of the videos up on YouTube.

Your average person from the 90s would be weirded out by most videos on YouTube.
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MLNP does feel like something that really does – excuse the pun – fill a gap. If Gallop does manage to pull it off, she could very well – and this is a rare occasion where it’s possible to say this without the Silicon Valley sarcasm– ‘make the world a better place’.

Until we start talking about sex , we’re all quite literally fucked
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Cindy says she’s in the Steve Jobs business of reality distortion. “When you have a truly world changing start-up you have to change the world to fit it, not the other way around.” Because, she concludes, until we actually start talking about sex and socializing it in a healthy way, we’re all quite literally fucked, in the wrong way.

Photo by Kevin Abosch

Ballsy investors are welcome to email cindy@makelovenotporn.com

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.

Featured Photo by Julian Hanford

The post Why We Need The Balls to Invest in Sex Tech appeared first on Tech Trends.

Alexandra Fine often says she wants to make the world a happier place, “one vagina at the time.”

But while that might seem like just another take on the Silicon Valley joke, fixing the “pleasure gap” is no laughing matter. Women are four times more likely to describe recent sex as “not at all pleasurable,” and that’s simply not OK anymore.

So it’s no wonder that when Fine—a Master in Clinical Psychology from Columbia who co-founded Dame Products with Janet Lieberman, an MIT-educated mechanical engineer—took its innovative vibrator design to Kickstarter last year, it made nearly eight times its original $50,000 goal.

Up to 70% of women need clitoral stimulation to orgasm, and Fin sold itself on an intuitive design that enhanced the natural movements of intimate touching by adding that clitoral stimulation for women to sex between couples.

The #sextech making the world a better place - one vagina at the time
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Almost 5,000 backers signed up before the campaign closed, and more are placing orders on the website every day. So it’s fair to say that Fine and Lieberman have struck quite a chord with the community.

This followed from the huge success of their previous Kickstarter product, Eva (a hands-free, strap-free clitoral vibrator that a woman can wear during sex), which quickly became the most highly funded adult product in the history of online crowdfunding—raising $575,000 in just 45 days.

Read all about it on Future Of Sex

These Sex Tech Dames Are on a Pleasure Crusade by @alicebonasio https://t.co/qv4GYhQCLS #sextech

— FutureofSex (@FutureofSex) April 17, 2017

The post The SexTech Entrepreneurs Who Crowdfunded Pleasure appeared first on Tech Trends.

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.