Bleak Outlook for Sex, Predicts Bioethicist/Sociologist

I really wanted to dismiss this article as alarmist, but I can't:

From Virtual Sex to No Sex
by James Hughes Ph.D., IEET Executive Director, bioethicist and sociologist at Trinity College

...the two most important developments in the technological control of sexare both already occurring; first separating sex from physical contact,
and then establishing our control over our sexual feelings altogether.

Hughes synthesizes a number of ways in which sex-tech is developing and concludes that it won't be long -- 40 years -- before:

...we have our brains laced with nano-neural networks (40 years?) we willeventually be able to experience completely virtual body sensation, sowe can have equal or better quality sex with partners in virtualreality, or with combinations of virtual reality and material reality;
two real people in a virtual space, a virtual partner in a real space,
two real and one virtual person in a semi-real space, whatever.
Nano-neural networks and new psychophamraceuticals will also allow usto modify and enhance sexual and emotional experience, to have orgasmsas long and hard as we like, or no orgasms, or to have an experience ofcosmic love and oneness instead of an orgasm, experienced as a bolt oftingles trough every inch of our body.

Now, that doesn't actually sound that bad, considering the level ofintimacy involved when two or more people open up their minds to oneanother in this way. But the thought that full-body sex would give wayto such high tech intercourse?

I think it underestimates the human need for touch. Yes, the brainis the largest sex organ blah blah blah, but we are bodies too, notjust minds. It's a holistic thing -- and the more we enhance the mindconnection, the more joy we can take from each other's bodies, too.

Hughes' article doesn't take into account the complexities ofromantic and sexual relationships. It certainly doesn't address whatwould happen to men if their penises were no longer the center of theirsexual experiences.

Nor does it address the expense -- are we really going to laceeverybody's brain with nano-neural networks, when today we still havepeople living without cell phones or internet access?

I can't help but have faith that should we develop the capabilitiesto do what Hughes suggests -- and I'm sure we will, those and more --
we will still, most of us, want the sheer animal delights of entwinedlimbs, scent, breath. (Maybe I'm just greedy, but, um, can't we have both? And for people who prefer just one or just the other, maybe they can have the option without external forces pressuring them to pick one way or the other as "superior"?)

However, Hughes' ideas about how the sexual technologies could beused to suppress sexuality -- to "cure" homosexuality, to enforcenarrow definitions of "appropriate" sexual behavior -- are particularlychilling.

Kyle Machulis, like me, has spent too much time immersed in sex-tech to dismiss the predictions out of hand. He ends his Slashdong NSFW post with this:

There'd have been a time when I would've knocked this whole article offas fucking nonsense (possibly earlier this morning even, before I tookall the cold medicine I'm on right now). However, 2 years down theroad, spending all my time working on or in virtual worlds and watchinghow people are innovating in sex tech, all I can do is stand by theside of the road, crack open a beer, and say "Yup."

It's a prime example of why the main message of my book is pay attention and think about stuff.