Wednesday, January 27, 2010

9. Off of the Street and Into the Bedroom

“This change does not depend upon the approval or disapproval of those living in the society.”-McLuhan

Forgive me for this next part, but I think it’s important to touch upon. There’s constantly something hovering over the visual portion of this invention- a sort of elephant in the room that everyone is thinking but no one wants to mention first. Looking at the trends of human nature and from talking to people, I think it’s an unavoidable situation, so let’s take a look. My friend Mike M- recently ran into me on the street:


Mike: “Hey man, what are you working on these days anyway?”
Me: “…uh, well actually, I’ve been writing about a bunch of techno babel lately- like what’s going to happen with these mixed reality glasses that are about to be on the market. I was writing about how you’d be able to like insert things into the real world, like Warcraft characters and stuff, and you’d be able to like manipulate the way you look, like add tattoos, or change your clothes and all sorts of things...”
Mike: “Or like make women hotter!”
Me: “….ya.”


As sad as it is, it seems that all new inventions are first used either to kill or for sex or both. Since I’d rather not talk about the military side of things, we'll spend some time on the other front. We’ve covered 3D games brought into the real world, and live Photoshop used to cover scars and generally make people more attractive, watching movies everywhere, and virtual characters which actually interact with the real environment. These all lead to what I’m about to talk about.
Today old men frequent strip clubs to get turned on before going home to have sex with their wives. Couples watch porn together in order to spice things up. With this device people [mostly men] will actually watch porn while having sex. Interactive porn, which will actually appear to be part of the scene at hand with virtual men and women who will crawl around your bed and literally whisper into your (headphone filled) ear. And since the device is getting better and better at understanding your moods and commands, it could react according to words, heart rate, hand movements, or ecstatic moans from either you or your partner(s). So as you approached your own climax, these simulations would reach theirs in an orgiastic frenzy.


Sorry to be the bearer of real bad news
but it’s often needed so what have you.
-Outkast


But like I said, every invention is a double edged sword. We often create ways of fulfilling the remnants of our animalistic tendencies without being made slaves to them. If we accept the fact that we’re apes- amazingly intelligent, art producing, fire wielding, half democratic, world ruling apes, but apes none the less- we are free to manipulate and form our desires and our selves. We rule our shortcomings if we understand them.
To keep from beating each other to death every time something went wrong, we created society and laws which punish where punishment is due. This took away our ability to fight and kill. To satisfy this need, we created sport- a form of physical competition which does not as often result in injury (notice how often games turn into fights, and then tell me that the two aren’t closely linked). Now we’ve decided through much experience that monogamous relationships are the most beneficial to society as a whole, but the problem has always been how to control the stereotypical male impulse to spread his seed in as many places as possible. Older societies had slaves, concubines, and boys to take care of this problem (our hero Ben Franklin was sleeping with Sally Hemings, his slave, when she was 14). Then as the ball and chain version of slavery fell out of fashion, we invented a more modern solution- prostitutes, which were still seen as a semi-legitimate form of male entertainment up until the second part of the last century. Now, as feminism and common sense have made us understand prostitution as a continuation of female subjugation (read slavery post 1900) it too has fallen out of fashion.
So we invented porn. And just as the number of mixed-race slaves being born didn’t line up with the number of slave owners who would admit to having had sex with their slaves, and the rules of economics wouldn’t seem to support as many prostitutes when compared with the amount of men who would admit to frequenting their services, today the amount of Infini-bites dedicated to porn doesn’t match the amount of men who admit to watching it on a regular basis. Except for rare exceptions, monogamy succeeds through well placed lies. And I’m ok with that- we should all be. It must be so, because we’ve evolved socially and morally, faster than we have physically, and mentally. This device would just be another notch in the ways we’ve invented to control our infidelities- limiting them to the realm of imagination, where they seem to do less harm.

And I forgot to mention- we talked about creating a virtual 3D model of my friend in order to hold a conversation face to (simulated) face while across the country. This could and would also be used in the bedroom. So you could theoretically make love to your wife along with a simulation of her best friend. A walking, talking, stripping version of her best friend. This might pose a few problems… but no more than the don’t ask, don’t tell compromise used for generations of concubines, prostitutes, mistresses, and porn.

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