Virtual Sex and Linked Dreaming

we hope we're a dignified podcast. We hope good jokes aside. But I know we have a lot of younger listeners out there, so you know, just for parents too maybe listening along. So we just wanted to give you a heads up. Yeah, we're gonna try to be delicate when we talk about virtual sex today, but um, there may be times that you went so just know that if you don't want anything that you want your kid to hear, then then sadly you may want to, um, I don't know,

listen and bleep out things. Yeah. Well, you know, just just putting it out there. And I think the next logical step would be to make the case for why I discussed this at all, because some people might think, well the virtual will say it's just that's it's kind of silly, or it's just needless, right, or it's this

sort of side column, this side effect to technological advancement. Okay, well, we we recently recorded a podcast on the Seven Deadly Sins Lust, right, and we talked about the lust economy, and we talked about how it is something that is just um blooming in our in our current culture that is so dependent on internet and other technologies, right, has brought basically pouring to our door and in every single way that it can, right, I mean, you know, we

were talking about the satyrs in the episode the over sexed goat men of ancient Greeks that fown their ways in some of the most marvelous artistic creations of the time. If you've ever taken, especially if you've taken like a child, like a niece nephew to an art museum, you're probably even more aware of Oh, there's a lot of sexuality in the in some of our greatest works of a Yeah, I don't look too closely at the Greek pottery, right, right? Yeah?

Or do yeah, So all of our great artistic achievements, sexuality and lust have been along for the ride, and the same as is true of technology. Not only technology, we just pretty much anything technological cultural artistic, because we had poetry, and out of that rises pornography. We invented the telephone, so suddenly, you know, two people can talk across vast distances, but you can also have a call into a sex hotline. Vulcanization responsible for so many rubber products,

including the modern condom. The list goes on. You you name it. Virtually any kind of technology, especially you're going to find and at least some attempts to turn it into sex for war like those are seemed to be our big interest, and uh, the sexual side tends to be a little better for everybody. Well yeah, I mean, I don't know that you could say that all the

language is predicated on sex. But if you say that one of the things that humans are trying to drive toward is is sexual coupling for one reason or another, language is pretty important in communicating that, right, right, So it makes sense that in this day and age, with all that we have available to us in the ways that we communicate with one another, that virtual sex would show up on the scene. Uh, sooner or later and really start to play a role in our relationships or

not our relationships. Right, So what is virtual sex? Right? Yeah, looking at it, I tend to find it to fall into two categories. Right. You have one form, which is

basically sexual communication with another person. This can be something as simple as sexting, where individuals are sending text messages that are merely sexy back and forth, sex chat rooms, webcam aided cybersex situations where it's it's about one person connecting with another and there may be varying levels of illusion between them, some technological, some just due to a lack of a full sensory experience. Yes, I can't solitary

sexual expert or connected via technology. And as we're looking into the future too, of what what virtuals sexuality insists in these situations, it's very much the idea of computer mediated communication. So the computers are aiding us in an attempt to communicate with one another, but it's a sexual communication that is generally more of a like than any

emotional and or physical link. But then there's a second type of virtual sex, and that would be sexual interaction with a simulation, interacting with some sort of sexual video game or some sort of a simulated experience. In other words, the flesh and blood person is not there, but you're trying to simulate that experience, right, You're interacting with a with a fantasy or an idea. All right, So let's

talk about some of the technology behind this. Yes, I'm talking about the haptic love glove right right, because we have these five senses, right, and of course sound that's a pretty easy one to get a hold of. We have a fantastic ability to transmit sound on the internet. Visuals that's pretty far along too. It has some ways to go, but we have a wonderful webcam set up around the world, and computer graphics are reaching the point where a virtual setting is more and more possible. But

then how are you going to feel things? Right? And this is where you get into haptic computer technology. And again, this is something where it's not just people sitting around saying I wonder if there's a way to feel up a centaur in a video mandling like like it's it goes beyond that because I think we've discussed the importance

of telecommunications and say surgery or robotic exploration. We want to be able to manipulate a robotic arm on the other side of the world that's maybe reaching around in somebody's abdomen performing a delicate surgery, or manipulate that arm on a space probe as it paused around on another planet.

Like we the more control we have, the better. And that's where you get into some of this haptic technology, which is how do I, by the aid of like a glove or some sort of neural link, how am I able to really get the sense of touching something in a virtual setting? Right? So, I mean the foundation for haptic technology is steeped in science, right, whether or not it's medical, um space exploration, or military applications. Right,

So military is another one. I'm not gonna punch somebody in a virtual environment, right, Yeah, that's but then it falls into all these other non sexual categories to like just pure entertainment, some sort of like video game experience where you're not just pawing around with this dummy hand, but you're actually able to reach out and grab things and touch things and manipulate things that maybe even feel them.

That's another thing about touch and feel is that it's a less understood since compared to things like site and sound right, right, And you're right, it is far more nuanced, and certainly with haptic technology that there could be improvements made. And maybe this is actually going to be the impetus for that, who knows. But I think it's interesting about this is that haptic technology for the use of virtual sex is just a testament to humans and their creativity. Right.

They're looking at this and saying, how else could we use this? Um? And else could I make money on it? Yeah? Right, right, our entrepreneurial spirits. But we talk about heptic technology, we should probably just talk about what we mean by that. Right. So let's say you have a pair of happy gloves. You insert your hands in them, right, and these are outfitted with data transmitters, and these gloves allow the user

to not control, but actually feel virtual items. And I believe in your article about virtual sex, you have a great photo of someone who's got their hands in one of the gloves and they're trying to feel the skin of I believe it's a dinosaur, right, virtual dinosaur. Yeah. Another example, and I don't think this was in this was maybe a different article, I think the Dirty robot

Jobs article. But there's this thing they have called the haptic cow that aids veterinarians and venarians students specifically mainly in the UK, in how to feel around inside of a cow, because when you're checking on how a cow's rear plumbing is working, and and you know, and you don't really want to do it. You really don't want

to insert your own hand. No no, no, well, I mean you're gonna have to insert your hand in the apparently, like before this goes around, it's like the options were pretty limited practice because the end just go out and stick a arm and a cow every time. You need to beginner training, but you need to know where everything is, and like some of the descriptions are in across the old way it was. It was kind of like the you know the game at Halloween where you wear the

blindfold and you said, and you're touching reach other. Here you're touching a bowl of eyeballs and brains, like you were basically reaching into something and then you would feel like a very vague approximation of this organ and then this organ and then this organ. With a haptic technology, the idea is, let's create a false cow rear that you can you can reach your hand in and actually have a haptic experience with the virtual inside, so you

can get a blueprint in your own brains. Said that you you actually do it, you're you know what you're looking for. Plus it seems a little more humane as well. Okay, so that's that's the basis of haptic technology which is being used with virtual sex. Right. We should obviously mentioned

so what you know. I don't think that we probably need to spell it out, but if you have the ability to digitize and transmit sense data, then you might be able to feel what it would be like to touch another human using these gloves, right, I say human in the air quotes right right. It could be anything, or it's or it's just a virtual simulation of some ideal it would be something you created, like a human

like alien centaur, yeah whatever, the Fiji mermaid. And there are actually some people who have already been tolling around with the Connect, which is the movement based interface for Xbox three sixty. Some people have you know, hacked that and are using the technology for various applications. And there are people who are working on sexual games where you would use the Connect to say, reach out and touch the Fiji mermaid. Yeah, isn't there something called I don't

know pronounces thricks th h r I that triple X. Yeah. Yeah, it's a three D sex game. It is compatible with Xbox Connect. So again, users can touch air quotes the models in the game they're talking about. It's sort of like Second Life. You can translate in anonymous online animated six capades into virtual life with three D graphics and customized fantasy avatars. So there you go. Yeah. Yeah, and

you also have something called again. When we when we talk about some of these, it might seem like, oh, yes, this is just the hug shirt. You're talking about Xbox we're talking about sort of taking it to that degree. So when we talk about this next thing, the hug shirt, think about the possibilities in terms of sexually communicating data to yourself. Yeah, this is an idea that comes to us from the UK company. By the end of Cute Circuit. It's alves that question like what do you want to

send somebody hug? And I think we mentioned this in the Hug episode. So you want to hug somebody, but you don't want to actually physically touch them, or you cannot physically touch them, How can you send that hug to them in a way that's not just like an

XO XO on a text. The answer is, what if they had a garment that had the internal structure that can deliver a hug, and then you could trigger that hug and also to some degree control the type of hug, the degree of the hug remotely via bluetoothe Well, and then what if you turn that hug shirt into a unitard and which just sounds sexy all over, and then you had the censors strategically placed in areas that might

stimulate a sexual reaction, right, I'm just taking into the yeah, yeah, yeah, obviously, I mean the hud shirt itself is like a really like a great sweet thing too. But I'm you know, making a dirty and I actually I think that there may have been a listener who told us about the hud shirt. Yeah, yeah, I think that's that's how we that maybe that's what we didn't actually mention the hug podcast and somebody said, hey, how can you not mention

the hug shirt? And uh and and true, it's it's fascinating. Then there's a there's another area of technological tinkering that is roughly referred to as tele built tonics, which that's subtle,

isn't it. Due to it flack and subtlely, we don't even really have to go into it a lot other than basically some sort of interface that plugs into your computer that allows somebody elsewhere on the Worldwide Web to stimulate you be at a you know, a some sort of wearable item or you know some What I'm trying to say is it's an accessory and plugs into your computer. Somebody else activates that device, and it can stimulates somebody sexually. So it's um, it's attempting to It's the hug shirt

on a different level. I'm struggling to you know, this is just like becoming like the most awkward podcast ever. I mean, we have discussed uh Stemen collecting robots, we've talked about and then that and then that was art and this this, this is bringing us to our knees, so to speak. Oh my god, it's getting I can't okay,

it's um. I guess that's the thing is that that the other things that you mentioned, like the klokobot is an artistic creation, you know, sprom collecting robot, for all its absurdity, has its roots and something medical and something like tele del Donix is basically I mean, just by the very name they're they're not even trying to to sugarcoat it with with anything else. But it does fit into this larger picture of how do we create a

full sensory experience in a virtual world? How could we possibly fully communicate with somebody who's, say on the other side of the world, or say it's traveling in space. Like imagine a situation where a husband and wife are separated safe for the better part of a year due to conflicting working situations, or a situation where one of

the individuals is on an interplanetary journey. It's one thing for them to be able to call and have a conversation, but what if they could connect in a physical manner and express their affection physically, Like this is the kind of technology you'd need. Okay, well now see now that's more romantic and nice. Yeah, yeah, okay, yes, this would be the technology as as awkward or weird as it

may seem. And this is you know, the viewpoint from this year, right Who knows what that's gonna look like fifty It may be just as as normal as any other sort of technology that we use. That being said, I still feel like there's a rudimentary aspect to it, right, because it's still fairly new, and I'm thinking about real touch again. I am going to use a euphemism here that I've used in the past. This is a device

that's made for man's frank and beans. Okay, okay. It is a sort of haptic hot dog bun that the frank and the beans or maybe just the front goes into. Although not quite haptic, right because it's not quite uh that advanced, But it connects to this device connects to a computer, and it synchronizes in real time to online porn.

And it works in tandem too. I guess you could say, the plot line of the of the porn point and then we all left and the device warms itself up, it lubricates, it pulls in a grips, so yes, and in the future possibilities of of romantic connections, you know, in the best intention ways. But this is this is

the hardware we have right now. Well, it's similar to these from robot in terms of the technology, because that had various manipulating devices inside its generating We're discussing like we're basically talking about a computer interface sex toy for for for men here, and it's very much a giggly kind of taboo thing really in in the US to

a large extent elsewhere as well. Um. I was reading something recently on a campaign in Japan to sort of remove the stigma from such devices, particular as it pertains to one particular brand of the device that they're trying

to market. But they made a good case for it, like making the point that you know, you're you're having this growing divide in Japan between the sexes, and you have in any culture, you're gonna have individuals sort of or outside of the norms of relationships, you know, and they have they have needs, they have physical desires that can't necessarily be met in their daily life. So to what extent can technology helped them? And is that really that weird or dirty things? Well, and that's a country

that really embraces technology wholeheartedly, so it makes sense. However, I do think it's kind of interesting because it's a very reserved culture. Yeah, but that maybe that's some of the friction that's coming up there right, um, is that if you're going to embrace it whole hardly you ought to do so, and you know that is a younger generation coming up to that's much more calm trouble with

the terms of that. One of the things that I think is really interesting about this that's far more abstracted is something called the orgasmatron, which we've talked about before. And this is the idea that you don't even need, say, some sort of weird, funky glove to slip your stuff into, or some sort of fancy touch sensitive pants or porn to look at, right, basically you circumvent all of that, right, Yeah. Yeah.

Dr Stewart malloy again we've talked about him before, but he was working on a device to alleviate chronic pain when he realized that it was sexually stimulating his female patients and again, lo and behold, whoa this application could be used for something else. He nicknamed it the orgasmatron. Barbaralla, Yeah, yeah, we should mention that Jane Fonda starring as Barbara Ella.

And the device is actually a small box with two small wires that like an epidural run under the skin and attached to the spinal cord, and it sends an electrical pulse through nerves from the spinal cord, which relays the message to the part of the brain that processes orgasmic sensations, and Jennets tell you like, hey, it's a go time. You don't even really need to think in order to have an orgasm with this device. You just pressed the button and uh, that is going to be

going at the low, low cost of twelve. By the way, it's interesting though, because subsequent experimentation city is done with this device, they've been able to stir orgasms in women that had severe blocks to achieving it otherwise. Right, Yeah, yeah, that's true. Women who had never been able to achieve an orgasm before, we're able to achieve it with this.

So I mean, there you go. That's but you can see advertisement for it, right, But you can see where it really opens the door for the possibilities of sexual communication in a virtual sense in the media and far future. The idea that it wouldn't even you wouldn't even have some sort of weird body glove you have to slip into. It could be something that is is connecting correctly into

your brains, into your your your nervous system. But we should probably mention some of the other sense, real quick and well, spend a lot of time with these that we we we really talked about smell printable odors in in a previous episode and a lot of those same technologies apply here. Means by which you could print a smell. You could use a certain palette of of basic smells

and use those to build specific smells. So and again that's in an attempt to build this virtual uh sexual reality for someone, right, so you could create more of a I guess um, a background for your sexual experience by uploading some smells and in the course a smell that's a huge influence on the way we taste things.

There have been some virtual reality studies goun to the creation of of devices that would allow you to say, taste of food that you're chewing and sort of feel chewing food to a certain degree, which obviously would have an impact on attempts to create a you know, a virtual sexual environment as well. Likewise, you have the kiss transmitter,

another product of Japanese innovation. I think I described before as being like a joystick that goes in your mouth and then you can sort of move it around to transmit a kiss through the Internet. It's current incarnation. It's you know, it's it's pretty crude design wise, it's pretty basic. But that's what it's like when you're blazing new trails. That's right, making that with the joystick. But yeah, I mean this again, this is stuff that's cutting edge right now,

but it seems rudimentary. One thing that also really wildly about to all this is the the idea of cross moodal attention effects, which is the idea that okay, think back to, Like if you can think back to, say, you know, your first kiss or something or something of a sensual nature, or or even it doesn't have to be central, just something of a memorable nature. You may really remember what the first kiss felt like. You may really remember what the smell of the other individual's hair

something of that nature. But you might not remember what the you know, the couch felt like, you know, or what was playing on the TV or you know that kind of thing, because this is the sense data that's just not important to you at that moment. Right But like our brains don't really work and full on three six h D, some things are going to get all of our attention. Some things are gonna get a little bit of our attention, and some things are gonna get

none of our attention. So you don't have to worry about having to create this like totally full on three e D super high graphics virtual environment. Instead, you focus on the areas that are being focused on the parts that are important to the experience, and so you don't have to worry about every every aspect of this simulated sense environment really cranking up to eleven. Okay, so this

is what you're talking about your article. The researchers at the University of York's Audio Laboratory working to toward this cross modal sort of situation where you have some things that are amped up in some things that are amped down. And to that end, they are considering a mouthpiece to simulate different textures against the tongue in mouth. Yes, this is this whatever for two yeah, yeah, yeah, And this

is the thing that cracked me up. And I believe you even put it in air quotes at some point in the article. This is virtual food chewing research, right, food chewing because you know, there's going to be a huge opportunity for virtual restaurants in the future, right, because everybody wants to virtually chew their food. So that's what this application is that proposedly for right, which again is kind of a wink wink, nudge and nudge. Obviously it's

going to be used for for other purposes in virtual effects. Well, you know, I make fun of it, but then I have to think on two counts. One it would be kind of nice, I guess, you know, if you want to experience like some horrible fatty food or or some sort of environmentally unsustainable food in the future, or say in the if we're looking, you know, at a future in which some of our our current foods have ceased to be around, Like what if we're looking at age

when bananas aren't a possibility anymore. Or maybe you're just feeling dangerous and you want to like check out cannibalism in a safe place, you'd be like a virtual That's

so that's an entirely separate can of warrants. But but even like in something like the video game Skyrim, which is the Elder Scrolls game, where you're in this big sandbox virtual environment, there's food in there, and when you eat the food, your character is healed, and it's largely a game about like flowing dragons and killing trolls and whatnot, and then and then I've been toiling with it a little bit, but you still find yourself saying, hmm, I

wonder if my character should grab that grilled salmon, or if should grab the bread, or there's like goat cheese. And I found that I was having my character grab more of the goat cheese than the other foods, even though he's I get nothing out of eating it all, right, So it was enhancing your experience, which is the idea of it was enhancing my experience. So I'm just I'm not sure exactly how that relates to the possible chewing

the food virtually in a game. Well, and who is we've talked about nanotechnology and maybe there will be nano nutrients that just that's right cause us to just quit eating food altogether because we get everything delivered to us. So maybe yeah, it's some sort of like you know, yearning for yesteryear when you remember used to chew food, right, because obviously that the huge pitfall to chewing your food virtually is you're you're still nothing's going to wind up

in your belly. But but maybe that you have nano it's down there that are taking care of it. I don't know, alright, so we should probably take a break, yes, but when we get back, we're going to talk about travel Latch and what it has to do the travel at yeah, the hotel motel, right, yes, and this is the amazing stuff that's coming up. To stick with it.

What does it to do refrsual sex at all? Right, we're back and uh, we're looking into the far future of well supposedly of sleeping at a hotel courtesy of Dr Ian Pearson in any report that was commissioned by Travel Lodge of all people in June of two thousand and eleven. Alr. Yeah, let's talk about the chops. This guy,

I mean, he's not just a futurologist. He has his maths and physics graduate degree, and he's worked in numerous branches of engineering, from aeronautics to cybernetics, sustainable transport to electronic cosmetics. His inventions include text messaging okay, no, no little feet there, right, and the active contact lens, which we'll talk about in a moment. So this guy has chops, right, he knows what he's talking about, and Travel Lodge commissioned him to create a report of what the future of

sleep week wink, nudge, nudge, looks like yes. And I'll be sure to put up a link to a PDF of this so you can you can read it for yourself on the blog post accompanying this, because there's some Favos illustrations that go with it that and and work safe fillustrations. Um, they actually are. And they kind of even look like the illustrations you would find like the back of the card on the airplane. It does look like how to edge of the airplane. Yeah, it makes

it even better, yea. And because the thing is, this guy didn't Pearson didn't set out to say I'm going to write about the future of virtual sex or shared

sexy dreams, you know, or that kind of thing. Like he's basically looking at, like, what, you know, given the current state of technology and where technology seems to be going, what conceivably is the state of technologically aided sleep in the year twenty thirty, And this is just the guy to answer it because in the in the same way that the authors of the nineties sixties paper on cyborgs that we mentioned in the Werewolf Principle episode, the same

way those guys were like looking at the cybernetics and really making some some seemingly crazy but but really big predictions about where cybernetic could lead. Pearson is doing the same thing, except with sleep and with virtual reality and dream technology. And I mean it's phenomenal to read about because he's not holding on to too much nostalgia about where we are now. He's not a small dreamer. This

guy is a big dreamer and he's amazing well. And I was even thinking too, that reminds you of already de Gray. Uh, the biogerontologist whom we've talked about several times, who is interested in extending life and thinks that we can do so on many different levels if we can catch disease before it really sort of blooms and takes over our bodies, and and saying like these are practical things that we can actually do because we've got the technology.

The same sort of thing here with Pearson and saying, here's the technology that we have developed, let's see what it looks like in a travel lodge setting. Some of it has to do with, say, the way the TVs work, you know, why you can like you know, pull up maps in your room. Uh. This stuff is is related to like, what do you want your room to look like? Can you push a button and make it look like

your your bedroom at home? Yeah. For instance, I've got one that's supposed to be for the ladies, and it's a year that would show you what you're after would look like after you put on your makeup, so you it uploads, I guess a photo of yourself with makeup on, so that when you're applying your makeup, you know what the after is gonna look like. So someone's a little bit silly, but it's basically just a showcase for technology. Wow.

I love that. What happens if if someone else looks into it, what happens if you have a dog or a cat with you? I don't know what happens like I do. If you upload like Dolly Parton, does it just go again? Like can't compute? Like that's you know, that's what I could se If I were Dolly Partoner, I probably would want to do that because that's a lot of makeup And I love Dollie. That's no slide

against her. That was just a great hoist. And then in other areas it gets it's a little more in a line with what we're talking about in this podcast. For instance, there's the auto massage distress pillows, yes, which are pretty great, and the illustrations to go with it also paint the picture of couples that have this distance between them, a geographical distance. So one is in a hotel room of one is in the bedded home. How can we bring these two together? Yeah? Okay, so let

me give you a quick overview. I mean he's basically saying that people and will talk more specifically about it, but people will be able to wear lenses to change the way their partner looks while making love without their knowledge, right, So they being not only do they changing their parents without their knowledge, right, clients will be able to being their virtual partners into bed while making love remotely, okay.

And hotel sheets and sleepware are being designed with special fibers that produce sensory responses allowing clients to feel you know, air quotes the sensations of sex like this is the ultimate and sexy pajamas. These are technologically intensified sexual pajamas. Yeah.

I mean, on one level, it's like augmented love making. Right, So if you actually have another human with you, um, you could use these active contact lens to change the way that they appear to you, right, which again this borders on like how much of this is weird and how much of this are we already doing to some degree, right, because they're a variety of different ways that people can person in themselves, uh for sexual activity that is augmenting

the reality right the really far future end of the spectrum. He even talked about couples being able to benefit from the ability to link their nervous systems via active skin electronics during the lovemaking, so that you would be able to feel what the other individual is feeling at the same time you're feeling what you're feeling. That's an enhancement,

that is that is quite an enhancement. I feel like I've I've read probably some some Richard K. Morrigan that involves some of that, but like on that far into the spectrum, using some of this very technology that we're talking about, the ability to actually go beyond the flesh and connect more directly with the nervous system in the

brain as far as central pleasure goes. And also to just to to talk a little bit more about those active lenses we're talking about delivering high quality three D images directly onto the rtna um and you can I mean they they're worn under the eyelids, right, because you can do this while you're even sleeping, which is kind of crazy. Ye, active contact lenses that they would have electronics, sensors,

and communication capabilities all embedded in lends itself. This is something that, like a lot of this technology, it would have a lot of applications, virsuality, medicine, you name it, but inevitably sexuality as well. Yeah, I mean, especially we're talking about sleepwear that you know has fibers that can create different sensations for you, and talking about massaging pillow. I mean, you know, it's pretty much spelling out virtual

sex or enhanced sex for starters. Like active context of this nature, they'd be able to detect when you're dreaming, inform you that you're dreaming, and allow you to to dream lucidly, also just to bring up the sheets to That's something that could also interact with other media, so TV, radio, web based media games. So again we've talked about the ability to have sexual video games, so just imagine plugging that up to you to your Xbox as well, and

participating in that way. But let's talk about dreams, because that's this is where it gets really very odd and I love the idea to travel. Lodge commissioned this guy to help them what sleeping in a hotel room in would consist of. His answer involves linked dreaming. The idea that you know, conceivably in the hotel room itself, or across distances with one member of a couple here remember of the couple in another city, that they would be able to share the same or very similar dream experience,

and that you could help to craft that dream experience. Right, because you're also talking about manipulating this room to the degree that you get certain smells that would evoke certain memories. Uh. And you know you're you're clad in sleepwear that is possibly stimulating your genitals, right, and you've you've got a your lover beamed into your room, so which you can, without their knowing, then change the way they look or if they're there too, you can change the way that

they look. Um. So it stands to reason that you could now plug into the dream landscape. And again it's

just at what point does it become augmented? UH sexual experience as opposed to a sexual experience you're already having, because dreams, already, given their nature, are virtual, right, Yeah, But what I wonder about the dream and we, I mean, we could get more into the technology that enables this, like like does some degree is talking about just your dreaming and you're listening to the same music and you're aware that it's a dream, and there you know, some

some other sense. Uh, there's some other sense data thrown in there as well. But and then in other cases it's more of like a neural linkage kind of thing. And he's talking about the ability to to play back dreams, record dreams and all this. But I wonder, like you hear people talk about lucid dreaming, and generally the you don't hear people say And then I realized I was dreaming, and I had a bunch of sex that they tend to say. And then I realized I was dreaming and

I was a thousand feet tall and pushing over buildings. Right. I realized I was dreaming, and the world fell away and I was flying and I turned into light. All my my problems were defeatable like this, like it tends to the accounts I've heard of lucid dreaming tend to be a lot bigger than sexuality. So I don't feel like we'll know exactly what it will be like until we're we're there, you know what exactly the frog since persons a joint lucid dreaming situation would be like, yeah,

I mean, who knows you. I think that most of these technologies will come to fruition. It's something like that that is harder to understand and harder I think, to manipulate to really be able to predict what you know, whether or not we could be coupling with each other intentionally in dreams. But you make a good point. There's already this aspect of dreams called lucid dreaming which allows

the individual to do that. And you're also right that and your typical like water cooler conversation people don't normally say, man, that's lucid sex dream last night. Yeah. But that being that being said, I mean a I love where this guy's brain is going with this. But then be I mean, maybe that would be even bigger than that, Like maybe it would have some sort of sexual nature to it.

But imagine like a situation where two people in love are sharing the same dream unbound by physics, feeling what each other is feeling. I mean, it's it's beautiful, like it's it's it's kind of like beautiful. But is it the same sort of situation where you get looped into those dopamine more texts of just chasing the dream of the thing rather than dealing with the reality. We all climb inside our little pleasure capsules and then we just

stay there. Yeah, you know, it's the little pleasure cocoons that right, and you never see daylight again. It also reminds me of Until the End of the World, Um of Invendor's film from I think it's like the eighties

or early nineties, I can't remember. But it also like it shows the characters absolutely tied to technology and the past at the same time, because they're constantly revisiting their dreams from another world because it's supposed to lot apocalyptic will that they're in, and they keep going back to their memories because they're getting charged from those. So I wonder if it's the same sort of thing We're just gonna all be hold up and he's tricked out travel

lodges again. It's factous to think about because it really takes us right up to the edge of of what we know about about about humanity and about technology, and about about the experience of of being human right or not being human right, divorcing ourselves from our humanness, the animal part of ourselves, which would be the touch, the actual you know, real touch, nothing real touch product. Right.

So there you go. That's a a little bit of virtual sex wrapped in a little casement of awkwardness with the little sprinkle of fleshy joy. That was bad. That fleshy joy. I don't know what that is. It sounds

like a breakfast cereal some kind, doesn't it Again. If you want to explore more about this and you want to see that that's a really cool article from Dr Ian Pearson, check out the blog entry that goes along with this episode, and I will try to remember to link to it, and if I forget and I don't link to it, hassle me and I will link to it for all intents of purposes. You can get in touch with us and find us about what our latest blog posts are about at Stuff to Blow Your Mind

on Facebook. We update everything there, and then you can also find us on Twitter. Our handle is below the mind and you can also send us your thoughts on the future of virtual sex by sending us an email at Blow the Mind at Discovery dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join the House Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.