15年后你怎样啪啪啪?
爱思英语编者按:关于未来性行为,下面有5个脑洞大开的想法。 Imagine this future scenario: You get home from a late night at the office. You feel like having sex. But your boyfriend is out traveling. Back in 2015, you would perhaps turn on Skype to see each other and have some fun there, but on this future evening you can actually touch your boyfriend with the help of technology. He may be on the other side of the world, but he feels your touch. And if you don’t have a boyfriend, that’s no problem. With this technology, you can have sex with a virtual partner on the Internet and feel as if she or he is real. Or you can have your very own sex bot lying at home under the covers. Here are five naughty ideas of the future of sex: 1. TELEDILDONICS AND THE VIRTUAL SENSE OF TOUCH Haptic technology—or haptics or kinesthetic communication—is tactile feedback technology, which recreates the sense of touch. An object (for example a T-shirt) is equipped with sensors that make it possible for the user to feel things physically although they’re communicated virtually. It has been used extensively in medicine, as technology allows doctors to perform remote surgery, but it has also been used for military training and space exploration. And of course, sex is the next area in which the technology is gaining ground. Products like Hug Shirt, which enables you to feel an embrace from a distance, or the Kiss Transmitter, show that sensory technology is well on its way into our sex lives, although still at a level that brings an uncertain smile to most people’s face. At the forefront of this technology, we see electronic toys that can be controlled by or via a computer, also known as teledildonics or cyberdildonics. We are gradually witnessing the beginning of these "remote sex technologies," with products such as Mojowijo, which lets you control your partner's dildo with a remote control, and Lovepalz, which is an interactive sex toy you can play with alone or online on a "cyber-enjoyment platform." It's even mainstream: Condom manufacturer Durex recently launched Fundawear, which is the world's first wearable technology that enables us to transfer personal touch from a smartphone app to a partner's underwear. 2. DIY 3-D-PRINTED GENITALS AND SEX TOYS Easy access to affordable 3-D printers has sparked a boom in demand for personal sex toys that can be ordered online or printed at home, and a large number of startups and companies are stepping up to meet the demand. Take the New York Toy Collective, which now offers what they call the "most personal and customized gift ever." It is a copy of your private parts, which are made with advanced 3-D modeling, 3-D printing, and molding in sterilizable and flesh-like silicone. Maybe an idea for next year's Valentine's gift (or not). 3. VIRTUAL REALITY AND INTERACTIVE PORN The website Red Light Center, a multiplayer virtual reality platform like Second Life and World of Warcraft but about sex and virtual prostitution, has about 2 million users. The platform also has its own currency, Rays, which you can use to buy various services such as interactive pornography in CamGirl Alley, clothes, shoes, and virtual real estate. If you can’t persuade another player to have sex with your avatar, you can also buy sex. The website also hosts about 100 virtual weddings a month, and there are wedding planners, DJs, after-parties—a whole wedding economy. Users earn thousands of dollars a month by making the virtual wedding dress designs and planning the weddings. It might not sound appealing to you, but the fact is that sites like Red Light Center continue to grow. In Japan, the company Tenga developed a product that combines an erotic video game, a Fleshlight-like contraption, and Oculus Rift to create an augmented reality sex toy. I imagine that we will eventually be able to live out our wildest and kinkiest fantasies with Tenga: If you've ever dreamed of having sex with Gaston from Beauty and the Beast or one of the blue guys from Avatar, then your dreams just might come true. 4. DIGITAL LOVERS Some people might think that a preference for the virtual world rather than the real world is absurd, but in the Japanese city of Atami, men go on vacation with their virtual video lovers via the dating simulation game LovePlus+. This is a new spin on the Tamagotchi craze, which you may remember from the 1990s, when children worldwide cared for a virtual pet living on a small plastic gadget, and the purpose was to inspire a true emotional connection. The 2014 Oscar-winning film Her explored the future of digital relationships. The film, set in the future, tells the story of a deep relationship—including wild sex—between a man and his virtual love, Samantha, who is the operating system on his computer. It may sound sci-fi-ish, but if you have an iPhone, you might already have sensed the rough edges of a relationship with a virtual creature like Apple's intelligent personal assistant Siri, which despite its (her?) current flaws, is constantly undergoing development and seeing significant improvements each year. 5. ROBOT SEX AND THE SEX DOLL ROXXXY And then there's sex with robots, or sex bots, as they are called. The inflatable Lolita doll is out, while the sex bot Roxxxy is in. Roxxxy is the world's first sex robot, and costs between $7,000 and $9,000. Roxxxy comes with preprogrammed personalities—shy, outgoing, and experienced—and you can also set her to different moods like tired or horny. Roxxxy also has a male counterpoint—named Rocky—should you be interested. A future where people spend their lives connected to a machine, living their lives on the Internet, and having any physical desire fulfilled with a variety of tools, instruments, and sex robots might not sound very appealing. But the technology is here, and we're just seeing the beginning of it. |