More Hype

• Visions of the future:
  • Future Sex magazine
  • Science Fiction
    
  • The hype is just starting to become "real"-- Teledildonics.com
    
    
• Cybersex is Tired
  Is cybersex wired or tired? According to the July/August 1993 issue of Wired Magazine Tired/Wired - Cybersex Is Tired, cybersex is decidedly tired.
  
  
• The July 1994 issue of FutureSex magazine offered a "Reality Check" to clear up the confusion between cybersex hype and reality.

  "Teledildonics
  A bodysuit worn to "feel" the remotely transmitted touch of a partner through the computer is a foundation for digital sex. Rheingold thinks that we don't have the basic transducer and tactile-feedback technology necessary for this digiterati fantasy to become a reality anytime soon. Martin is afraid that the first wave of teledildonics is "likely to be some kind of MIDI-controlled vibrator or suck machine." For Alman, however, "high-tech sex is a battery-operated vibrator."
  
  Virtual sex worker
  (no real person "behind the curtain," just a program)
  Kadrey notes that a digitally created partner would "eliminate certain legal problems if there is no flesh-and-blood sex worker involved in the activity." But Martin does not think it's necessary to wait for the perfect "virtual" partner. "Falling in love is already a virtual experience in which you make a 'real person' into a fantasy," she says.
  
  Orgasmatron
  Woody Allen's Sleeper turned many people on to the idea of a brain-stimulating device that would deliver an orgasm on demand. Kadrey says an orgasm in a pill will come first. Martin thinks an Orgasmatron puts "way too much emphasis on orgasms as a goal instead of as a part of a total sexual experience." Rheingold thinks the device already exists, "But the inventor has not been able to leave home to get to the patent office."...
  
  Reality Checkers
  Isadora Alman, "Ask Isadora" syndicated columnist, sex and relationship counselor; Richard Kadrey, senior editor at Future Sex magazine and author of "Covert Culture Sourcebook"; Nancie S. Martin, president of Jouissance Productions and former editor in chief of Playgirl; Howard Rheingold, author of "The Virtual Community", editor of The Millenium Whole Earth Catalog, and "Tomorrow" columnist for the San Francisco Examiner."

• "Orgasmotron" by Pit Schultz
  
  
  
  An "Orgasmotron" was designed in 1994 by German artist Pit Schultz. Is the orgasmotron an art project, a possibility, or a reality? It's difficult to tell by his Web page, but it seems more a social statement than a reality. Schultz describes the orgasmotron as follows:
  
  Definition:
  
  An orgasmotron is a machine which can cause and reproduce orgasms performed by the human body not via mechanical but electric, electromagnetic or informational stimulation.
  
  Introduction:
  The orgasmotron project is collecting, recombinating and distributing digital recordings of brainwaves during human orgasms. The project is situated between art and science and tries to function as both, a classical psychological experiment and a processual piece of art. It is situated in a social context and needs the participation and critique of you as a member of the net.community.
  
  Thesis:
  The following "fuzzy" thesises will be focused and further developed during the project:
  
  1)There exists a significant difference between brainwave-patterns during "normal" state of mind and sexual climax, as one of the strongest expression of human emotions. Orgasms are not only caused by mechanical stimuli but could for example correspond to "informational" phenomenons like wet dreams, fetishism or telephone sex. This leads to the question of the interactions between the concepts of "physiological event" and "psychic energy" especially if they correlate with their technical "representations", the measured brainwaves.
  
  2)"Desire" as a basic force of social life is encoded in several technical, cultural and economical constructions. There are highly deterritorialized mediums that are made to "satisfy" the user and to make him pay. Capitalism functions at it«s best when it establishs a certain control of the technology of desire. This can be better observed in a partial system, like the one of "sexuality" as a culture of control. The realisation of the orgasmotron as an payable technical gadget will be a test of the ability of capitalism to go out of control. The good possiblity to reduce the risks is to use the art-system.
  
  3)The process of the digitalisation of sexual exitement can become reversed. On condition that there is a pychophysiological effectiveness of nonthermal EMF the creation of emotional sensations during the emission of EMF-encoded brainwaves of orgasms is possible. This will be a much easier provement than the formulation and validation of mechanisms of determination.
  
  Goals: The goals of the first version of RFO is finding: - an interchange format for digitized orgasms - an affordable gadget to record brainwaves (like share ware) - a comunity of involved people from different disciplines - test data to experiment with - contextual knowledge (bibliographic references, realated projects)
  
  *image on http://www.icf.de/CAC/Artists//c/laboratory.html
  
  
• "Zorn"'s Orgasmatron from Wired Magazine, "The Desire to be Wired," by Gareth Branwyn
  
  Wired Magazine's article, "The Desire to be Wired," by Gareth Branwyn, described an underground scientist named "Zorn," who may or may not be working on a brain-stimulating orgasmatron. He will not talk about the device, supposedly from fear that it will be abused.
  
  

  "Meet Zorn. I got his name (which has been changed) from another neurohacker who told me a wild tale about a device that Zorn had recently built. "It's got an electrode ring situated over the pleasure centers of the brain. I know someone who tried it and he said it was like having a continuous orgasm." My God, you mean this guy's invented the Orgasmatron? I immediately called Zorn, but at the suggestion of the other hacker, I only talk to him generally about basement brain tech.
  
  Zorn's a psychologist by trade and a weekend electronics hobbyist. He tells me about several sound and vision devices (brain toys) he's built, similar to those now commercially available. He seems entirely sane; he's full of cautions. When I tell him about some of the other neurohacks I've heard about, he expresses deep concern. "If these people are going to mess with neuroelectric or neuromagnetic stimulation, they should build in more safety devices. There's a tremendous potential for harm: brain damage." When I ask him what he's been doing recently, he becomes quiet. "Well, it's something I'd rather not talk about. It's a device I built that could very easily be abused." (Hmmm... My mind flashes with perverse images of twitching orgasmo-junkies permanently jacked into the Zorn Device.)
  
  "Why would it be abused?" I ask.
  
  "I really can't say anything more about it. It would be a disaster if it got out into the world." Definitely an Orgasmatron...or perhaps just another piece of cybernetic mythology."
  

• V-I-P