What's the future of virtual sex?

are you? I'm doing good. I still have a little bit of the the nose juice for the most part. I'm I'm good. My energy is up. You dude, I have to show you next time I blow my nose, I have to show you. This looks like it's it's oh no, no, no, no no. It's like Cheetos colored and intensity. I I've never seen anything like it before, and it's coming out of my head. That's weird, orange orange yellow day glow. Well, I might as well talk

about my sickness. Yeah, how are you feeling well? I had as you know, um and as you also even further, No, about once a year I get a stomach flu. Even though I think I took last year off, I don't think I ever got it last year. I don't think you did either. But uh so, my daughter waits eighteen full months before she throws up for the first time, which is a nice run, and she comes in the kitchen the other she's like Jerry Seinfeld had really long

run too. She comes in the kitchen and just projectile vomits all over the place out of nowhere, and um, you know, isn't feeling well and has some like uh some some diarrhya going on. Why this show was really getting off to a gross start. But two days after that, I'm like, I'm invincible, Like I've I've avoided this. That's a bad thing, I think. I hope you didn't say it out loud. I think I might have. And then a two days ago at four pm, it's like, I

feel a little weird. Five minutes later I was throwing up. And then six hours after me, it hit Emily. So she was able to at least care for our child until she went to bed, and then she was like, I'm not feeling so good either, And then my mom thankfully came through and uh and took our child from the sick house, and then Emily and I literally all night long, we each had a bathroom at our disposal, and it was just like every thirty minutes, somebody in

the house was like, man, it was really bad. I mean, it was just it was one of those things where we pulled the curtains. We were just like, I didn't even want to look at each other. It was just gross. But I'm I'm you know, it's a twenty four hour thing generally, And yeah, you said you told Jerry that it was like twenty four hours to the minute. Uh, pretty much. I mean I started feeling better at about four or five yesterday. But I'm just just weak, you know, man,

Like it just takes a lot out of you. And I feel like, of you know, I'm not big on the ad workout, but I feel like, I know, you look ripped. Oh dude, I might have Like I feel like I really might have pulled muscles in my rib cage from wretching. It's funny, all right, So no one else is listening anymore. No, let's talk about virtual sex. Yeah, we chased everyone off. This is a good plan. Hats

off to you, so chuck. Yes, people invented the Internet, and within about I don't know, eight or nine seconds, there was a porn side up right, probably yeah, and since then apparently, um, it's it's been largely overstated. But but most people associate the Internet, at least in part with photography. Really, Oh you're kidding, Well, what do you mean associate? Like like when when you think of the Internet, you think, well, that's a vast repository of pornography. I

don't know if that's the case. I think a lot of people do. Okay, Um, but there's a lot of pornography on the Internet, and in fact, the Internet has helped just foster pornography into you know, by by by light speed. It's just virgin right. But it turns out, um, apparently one study I saw in two thousand and eleven estimated that only one point five percent of all web pages are sexual sex based one. Well, that was really surprised to hear that. Yeah, but I mean that's just

a numbers game. Sure, I mean there's there are literally millions of porn sites. But doesn't that doesn't that seem low though? Even even considering the point is people still all do like sex and pornography, and they like the Internet. And when it when the thing when they were put together, everything just blew up. Like apparently now the the Internet porn industry alone globally is worth something like forty to fifty billion dollars. I saw that in a two article

in the Economist. That's a ton of cash. Man. That's like, that's how much like the Disney company is worth. They're not gonna like that. Their name is you know, I just pulled that out of the air. Yeah, good choice. Um. But one of the things, like I said, when when the Internet um further pornography, it hasn't stopped, it hasn't plateaued. It's like, oh great, here's a here's a website that's

got porn on it. We've achieved peak Internet pornography. Like that, some of the most um innovative thoughts to developing the Internet further has been based on pornography. Yeah, just when you think they've covered it all, somebody's like, hey, you like to, uh take a Christmas ham and carve out a hole and put your foot in it. We got a website for that, your foot called hamfoot dot com. Oh man, you better hurry up to trademark that before

we released this episode. And by the way, when you this article was written by Robert lamb our own uh colleague here of stuff to blow your mind when you read it, did you like, how did you feel just hearing it in Robert's voice? In my head? I don't know, maybe that's something with it. I just wanted to take a shower. Like if Robert, if he typed the word lovers like one more time, I was I was literally just I don't I've never liked that word with you,

and especially not coming from Robert like him. And I think he used the word lovers in here like six times, like you know, he was wearing a silk robe and he wrote this. Yeah, I can't imagine how much like graphics stuff got edited out from his first chap uh. But we're talking about the future of simulated virtual sex, not necessarily robot sex um because that's a different thing. And we actually we did a whole episode on that, remember, I think it was called like will we Marry Robots?

Because we were trying to be above the board. But we talked a lot about that, but that that's not what this episode is about now. This is a little bit more about UM using technology to either simulate sex or two and I found out in a lot of cases, and we'll go through it as we talk about some of these specific things. A lot of them seem geared towards UH or at least they're marketed as like, hey,

are you in a long distance relationship? Like, you know, we can help bring you closer by sort of synchronizing UM phone sex in a way, like just a super advanced form of phone sex, right right. And that's definitely like the the genteel way of putting it, because I think probably more to the point, it's hey, do you, um, i'd like to have internet sex with people you don't know? Well,

have we got some technology coming down the pike for you. Yeah, And they don't say, hey, are you super lonely and like and you know, it's easy to laugh about, like the lonely dude in his house, but there there are you know, they're genuine phobias, and like, this could be a benefit to people who who aren't, like literally aren't able to certain conditions to go out and have real sex. You know, sure about that, but it's it's a real it could be proved to be a real benefit. Yeah,

holders are gonna love this stuff. The the other thing that that almost sounds like what you just said was like a mid term goal of UM, of the future of internet based sex, right, But ultimately from everything I'm seeing, the ultimate goal, or maybe not even goal, but what will probably prove to be the ultimate reality is um that sex will be so improved and and perfectly refined by science and technology that we we will end up preferring it and and I mean, like the normal average

human will end up preferring simulated sex over the actual real thing. I don't know, man, I mean that's a uh, that's that sounds like one of those things that that people in fifty years will look back and be like, what idiots, you know, they got that really wrong. But it also seems like, I don't know, people like, uh, people like good sex, you know. Yeah, but it's like simulated sex is to real sex as soilent is to food. Well that's that's so I guess we can talk about

it now. Um, there's the basis of it. Is not like everybody just going to be um these uh just completely what's the word I'm looking for? Just this crazy promiscuous people all just having anonymous internet sex with people all over the internet. That will that will probably be a very real possibility. Um, I mean it already is, but this actual virtual like convincingly simulated sex um will

eventually be a possibility. What I've seen that will be more likely is that people will be in monogamous relationships like they are now, but rather than doing it, you will go with your like your separate rooms and do it remotely using the simulations, right, or it potentially could be a way too, maybe relieve the uh, the incland nation to step out on your husband or wife, yeah, and say, you know what, I'm not gonna cheat on you. I'm gonna you know, it's just a very technologically advanced

form of masturbation. Sure, But that also, like I can definitely see couples where say, like, you know, that's fine, that's great, go get your rocks off with the computer lady. But I also see like, no, no, no, that's not

that's terrible. Yeah, and I think that's already an issue now, Like you know, are you sure with porn sites or porn sites or webcam people like whatever, But when you when you add this element and This is ultimately what we're talking about, Chuck, is the progression toward adding actual

physical sensation too to internet sex. Um that this it just opens up the whole idea of cheating like even further, you know, like you wouldn't have to use your imagination any longer because your body is being physically manipulated to to recreate the sensations of having sex in real life. I feel like we should take a break. I think so too. I think we really set this one up so high that we can't possibly deliver from now on.

All right, well, let's take a break and uh, I'm gonna go have a talk with Robert Lamb and we'll be back right after this. All right. So Robert Lamb points out that every lover's embrace is essentially since data. And that's true. It's um, you know, it's touch, smell, uh, sound, it's it's like all the sensory data that we get from you know, eating an apple or something is the

same with sex the sexy times. But he asked a very pertinent question here, and that's kind of what we're after is how far can you go to digitize and transmit that information? And uh, touch is probably the best the obvious starting point, right exactly, because if you step back and you look at the the landscape of internet sexuality today, right, it's all all of it is visual, the entire thing. I mean there's audio too, so it is um oral and visual. And I mean the au

are a l um Now. I had a joke I had to really fight to not say out loud, well email it to me, okay, um. But so basically, the the current state of internet sex uses your eyes and your ears, and that's it, right, yeah, And everything that we have is based on that, and there's but that's that's not to say that that's not going to play a part in the future of sex. It's just that's the bedrock, the basis that's been laid, and now they're trying to develop it based on that bedrock. And like

you said, the next step is touch. Yeah, and if we're going to talk about technology and touch, um haptic technology, which we've talked about. We've talked about this before, haven't we in some capacity? Surely maybe it was a trans cranial The thinking cap was that maybe I don't know, it doesn't ring a bell to me, honestly, all Right, Well, anyway, haptic technology is that that's gonna have a lot of applications. It's essentially I mean, if you're talking about uh, non

sexy time stuff. It ranges from uh, telesurgery like literally a doctor being able to perform a surgery that's not in the room, um, which could be amazing, you know, in a lifet having technology or like military training, space, NASA space exploration, stuff like that. But it's essentially technology

that uh is. It's it's wearable. I mean they talk about gloves a lot, but it takes it can take the form of a shirt that you wear that sends, you know, pulses of stimulation through that device, whether it's a glove or a shirt to your body, right exactly. So it's it recreates the sensation of touch, right. Yeah. And the weird thing is when I started researching this,

I was like, you know, what is touch? You take it for granted, but um, one of the things that they're going for is when you when you touch something, what you're really doing. Like let's say you pick up

a vase. Yes, you're you're picking it up, but as far as your sense of touch is concerned, that vase is exerting pressure on the inside of your hand, and haptic gloves in particular are concerned with recreating that pressure um against the inside of your hand to make it feel like when you're looking online and you're virtually grabbing a vase that in real life, the pressure that you would normally be feeling is being recreated by a number

of different means. And they've got a lot of different technologies that are competing right now in the prototype space for coming up with this kind of haptic technology that can recreate it. Like, there's one did you see that

thing I sent you about the haptic glove that uses ultrasound. Yeah, that's out of the University of Sussex in uh jolly old England, and it's called skin Haptics is a system and yeah, he uses ultrasound pulsing, this focusing basically this haptic feedback onto the surface of your skin so it feels like I mean, right now, it's not just like sexy stuff they're talking about, uh, like a like an interface that doesn't exist in front of you, right right.

So there there's a couple of different ones. One actually uses ultrasound to disturb the air in mid air so when you go to press a button with your finger, the ultrasound a non existent button, right exactly. Um, the ultrasound creates an enough air turbulence where your fingers going that you're you get a bit of resistance from it.

You feel pressure, which is awesome. Yeah, it's amazing. This other the other skin I think skin haptics version, actually sends the the ultrasound pulse through your hand so that you feel it from its pulsing from the back of your hand through your hand, and then the sensation is being felt on your palm, so it's recreating it coming in the reverse direction. But it feels like, say you're picking up a vase. Yeah, and now is that with a glove or is that just the ultrasound through the air.

That second one is with the gloves, So so the other one is like, say a screen that's mounted next to an oven is using ultrasound from the screen on the countertop to disturb the air above it in mid air. That's different. The the glove is sending it from the back of your hand to the front of your hand. And I keep saying it's like you're grabbing a base. But really, with what we're talking about. It's they're trying to recreate what it feels like to say, grab a boob.

I mean, that's what they're doing here, right. So so you know the connect controller for I think Microsoft came out with it for Xbox a few years back, and um like, within literally within a month, there was an open source controller. It still is and within a month somebody released a um like a connect porn game. Sure, right, And so if you look at the videos of this, did you see any of them, uh of the Xbox thing or the other thing, the Xbox one, No, I

did not see that one. So it's basically the demo is a guy like kind of feeling up a c G I lady, right, okay, And and if what he's doing is it's all visual. What they're trying to get is with with haptic devices is that visual thing, but

then you will feel what you're seeing on screen. That's that's the next step that people are working on as far as the Internet sex is going, Yeah, trying to synchronize well, well we'll get to that, but yeah, trying to synchronize these things to where you're looking at something and if you and it just matches up the feel and the and the visual all matches up right, So you get the visual to begin with, that's already done.

That now you have, thanks to the say VR connect, you can move your hand in this world and it translates onto your computer the virtual world, and then that so that's done. Then next step again is recreating the sensation of touch from that virtual world into this world. So I thought you were talking about the um that that website, the sex game website. Oh three d x chat. Did you go to that one? Yes? Holy cow? Yeah

warning warning, uh, very graphic website. Yeah, we're not saying that to all the fourteen year olds because I think every fourteen year old live has been there, but the year old had not. Yeah, I hadn't either. I had no idea. It was a thing. I was like, what is that kept popping up in uh in in research, and I went and looked. I was like, no way, Yeah, it's um that is a sex game and it's you. You're you have an avatar, but game game is uh,

you're using that loosely. It's almost like second life. It's like a hangout, like virtual chat, like life based. Yeah, like you you have a you design your your dude, to your lady, and you go into a bar and you're hanging out, and then you take that person back to your apartment and you have like really graphic uh you know, animated sex. Right, but the person you're picking up is an actual person in real life as well. It's their avatar. It's not like you know, you're you're

picking up a sim or something. Right. So, and that's that's apparently like really big right now. A year that's what it cost. Yeah, you get to that's a weird number, man, I know, and it's not even ninety two. I rounded up. It's like, I don't I don't know. They found that was a tipping point. Yeah, exactly, No, they won't pay ninety nine. They'll pay. We pulled a few perverts in our town and they said a hundred dollars, no way.

But they got confused around the marks. So that we want that, so, Chuck, we we were largely talking about with Haptick devices, um the love it's not just the glove. That's a that's a big first step, but ultimately the goal is going to be a basically a haptic full body suit to where this the pressure, incense and warmth and everything that has to do with touch is recreated all over your body because your hands are great, but

you know, there's still just your hands. As far as internet sex is concerned, that that full body haptic suit is going to be the holy Grail, and apparently it's not that far off. There's a a guy who founded, um a company called Shadow Robot Company. Uh that sounds creepy. Well, actually they make anthropomorphic robot hands for um like people who have had a limb ampitated. It's like a legit robot um company that he just happened to be quoted right.

His name was Richard Greenhill, and he said that, um, I think it was last year in an article he said that hap full body haptic suits are just a few years away. Probably Yeah, that'll be huge. But in the meantime, there's been these baby steps that have been taken over the years. And one of the first I guess kind of prototypes of a haptic suit was a haptic shirt called the hug Shirt. Yeah, I don't. I looked.

I went to their website and I didn't see I mean it said by it now, So I kept on it to see how much it was and then it didn't come up so I don't know if it's not at market yet, but the idea is is it's a shirt and this is the you know, the most g rated part of this show, because it's a shirt that

simulates a hug, yeah, which is pretty sweet. Company UK company called Cute Circuit and I think they came out with it back in like two thousand one or two, and they I think they released them for sale in like two thousand five or six or something like that. But basically, you are wearing your, um, your hug shirt. You're connected to the internet via the hug Shirt app,

and then you're you're, UM, your lover, your lover. Man, I was gonna say a little sweetie was on the other end, but lovers fine, um, and they're wearing their hug shirt connected to the app. So when you simulate a hug, right, you hug yourself wearing the hug shirt, it transmits that hug to your right and they feel the sensation of the hug you just sent transmitted through their hug shirt. It's pretty it's awfully sweet. Yeah. I wanted to I want to know what this feels like,

you know, I wanted to sample one. Yeah, well, I mean We're on a pretty great streak of not doing the stuff that we're talking about, So why start now? You know? Well I couldn't, you know, I tried to buy one, but I didn't see where you could. Did you see a very nice man named Don Kent who gave us plenty of the Elder before sent us a box of soiling? Oh wonderful. Yeah, well, let's try it on air. Okay, okay, Oh man, that's a eight idea. We'll have to set it up in another episode just

so that it has all the proper introductions. We'll just say this so that everybody can get really excited about it. Yeah, I'm excited already. Uh. So the other simulator that um is in prototype mode. There's something called the Kiss Transmitter from Kajumoto Laboratory at Tokyo's University of electro Communications, and um, did you see this thing? Yeah? I was very much turned off by that. Yeah, it's at least right now unless the prototype has advanced. It's supposed to simulate French kissing.

But it was a box. Uh and it looked like a bent drinking straw that just went around in a circle. Yeah. And they showed some poor undergrad who is having to demonstrate it, and they were doing close ups of his mouth and this thing swirling around with It's not pleasant at all, No UM, but the Kissinger, well hold on with just with the with the the kiss transmitter. I think the idea is eventually that that um straw will be a tongue, which would makes a lot more sense.

But the trick to this is it doesn't just spin in a circle. What it does is it uh, it works with you like when you are moving your tongue around, it is reciprocating in likewise fashion. So it's not just willie Nilly spinning around in a circle. It's it's it's smarter than that. Yeah. So there was this other thing called the Kissinger. I did see that that was really creepy. So that one, this one makes a lot more sense

to me. It's it's actually the PhD project of Emma yan Zang out of the City University of London and UM this thing. It was originally a box that connected via USB to your laptop that you kissed and it had like kind of almost cartoonish lips attached to it or whatever. And then the newer prototype is this UM this thing that you connect to, say your iPhone, and so it's it's connected to the web through an app.

And when it's got this, I guess the mouth interface is just this um, this pad almost a touchpad area that you kiss, right, yes, And as you're kissing it, it is taking in the movement and pressure of your lips, sending it through the app to your lover yeah um on the other end, and recreates the kiss to them. But what's cool is it's bidirectional, so while they're kissing you back, you're receiving their kiss. Yeah. What's the disturbing part to me is is that it comes in the

form of like a little round bunny rabbit. Oh yeah, yeah, you didn't see it. Oh that was the first version. Oh, the second version is conversion. The second version is much less like they basically threw out any attempt to make it look like a mouth. It just it funk sans like it. It doesn't look like it because I think they probably you were probably in the majority of people

who are like, I'm not kissing that thing. Well, yeah, I mean it was a little it looked like a little round like Ferby toy with a big set of lips. On it. Yeah, And the other disturbing part was you had to hold it down because it was constantly trying to get away, which it was like, why did you make that design choice? That's very creepy. Yeah, so we'll get to really creepy stuff later too. By the way, well,

are you talking about tell a del donis. I think we should take a break before we talk about that about tell adul donis. Let's take a break alright, We're back to talk about telldil donics. It's funny, like I can't say lover, but I have no problem saying telldul donics. Yeah. So of course they called it that. It needs some like nineties club like background beat with like telldulics. Yeah. Maybe we'll see if Noah whip us up one. Alright, So tell adul Donix is the development of automated sex

toys controlled by either a program or remote user. Right, so technically, if kissing it could be construed as sex, the kissinger is a form of teleodul donis. Yes, and the basis of telldul donics as you have some sort of um uh sex toy, I guess it's a good way to put it. That's a great way to put it.

And that sex toy is connected to the internet. Um and like you said, it can be controlled by somebody else on the other end, or a program or like a video that's um pre programmed to interact with your sex toy. Right. Um, the both of those are are gonna be huge, But it seems like the it seems

like the progression is more toward remote sex. Right. So the upshot of it is that you have two separate sex toys, um with some distance between them, connected to the Internet, and the people manipulating them on either side are receiving the sense information, the tactile information from the other's sex toy into their sex toy and is responding to it in kind. How is that? Uh, that's a

good you navigated those waters. Thank you. If it sounds like the word itself sounds like something from the seventies, it's because it is. Um. It was coined in nine by a guy named Ted Nelson. Uh. And he was talking about you know, future where you have remote sex with those those real feelings of touch transmitted through computers. Um. So he was really kind of ahead of the game there. Um. And one thing they compare it to uh, it's also

cyber del Donis or telesildnix Um. One kind of non sexy thing that they will liken it too is the the vibrating uh video game controller rumble pack. Yeah, but I mean they all have it now, and it's if you play video games, that's a big part of it. You know, it really adds. It adds a lot to the game played. Um when you feel like the rumble of like a car crash or an explosion or something, and you know it's kind of subtle, but it's just

such a part of gaming now. If it went away, people would be like, you know, what's what's going on? It's not nearly as good, right, Okay, So now imagine that, like your controller rumbling a little bit, and the effect that that has on you if you if you think about it, like especially with the N sixty four rumble pack, the first one I believe, which is haptic technology, right, Yeah,

I remember when that came out. It was pretty awesome, and it was awesome, but if you think about it, basically your controller just shook and it didn't necessarily faithfully recreate whatever it was supposed to be recreating, but that that extra sense that was being manipulated caused your brain to just go wild. Your imagination just ran wild, and it really enhanced it, like you said, right, yeah, it's gotten a lot better too. But how they do it? Now?

Imagine you take that out of your controller and out of your hands and apply it to say, your sex toy, right, and now you're developing sex toys that have an amazing degree of precision in recreating temperature, moisture, level, um pressure, attention, torque, horsepower,

all this stuff. Right, So you've got so the sex toys are advancing, and then their ability, their bi directional ability to receive information and transmit information to another sex toy, which is then capable of recreating and then sending its own information, means that you can have virtual sex across the internet using sex toys and experiencing a real techtile

sensation from it. Yeah, and these are the ones where mostly I saw that they were trying to target, uh, couples that are in long distance relationships or when you're away from each other for business travel or whatever that you can you can sink up your sex toys in real time, so the things that you're doing are being felt on the other end exactly But a good example of this is the love Pals, which if you're a sex toy manufacturer, step up the names, shall we. Oh

it's always been that way. Love Pals with the z um Yeah, of course. But they came up with a pair of um sexy choice called Zeus and Hera and and they're exactly what we're describing, and from what I can gather, they're basically the cutting edge of it. Yeah, I mean I looked up there were they list a few in this article Real Touch from two thousand nine

seems like it completely went away. There was one in two thousand eleven called love Lovins, not with a z surprisingly Um, and they had the Iman and the Eye Lady, and that I look that up. They had Max and Nora which were there. It was a male master bader which is a machine that does it for you, and a female stimulator and they named them Max and Nora. Is very cute and they worked through bluetooth in their phone app. But um, the last I saw was there was an indie Go go from a couple of years

ago that was half funded and posed. So the only one that I've seen that has really and I don't know about taken off because I don't know they're sales, but it seems like it's a legit thing that's out there. Is the love Pals, Well did you look up the winds? So we got that article from the website of a company called kirou k I I R O O. Yeah, and they have their own thing going. That's actually what um doing well too. The onyx, yeah, the onyx and the pearl, yes, yeah. And the onyx is the male

uh buddy, right, and the pearl is the female buddy yeah. Uh. And these things look like you know that the right out of the Apple Store. I don't know if you saw pictures, but they're obviously trying to make them like take them out of the back rooms of Spencer Gifts and bring them to the forefront of Like, look at this thing. It looks like you're you know, it looks like any any Apple device you would find. It's exactly.

It's futuristic looking. Uh. You can put it in your dishwasher, you can leave it on your coffee table and your parents could come over. They'll have no idea exactly, doesn't have any weird spikes or nubs. Right, You don't get like a free trial of um, you know, simulated pot with it. What's that stuff called? I have no idea, you know, like simulated like um fake pot that you could buy it a head shop. Oh yeah, I think I know what you're talking about. I can't remember. It's

called spice. Yes, spice. You get a little baggy of spice for free with it. They're like, we simulate everything, all right. So we're joking around a lot. But um, there's a man named Dr Stewart Milloy and he created something called the Orgasmatron and again that's kind of a goofy name, but he created in two thousand eight, and this one actually sends an electrical pulse through the nerves of the spinal cord and basically the idea is it could potentially help women who either cannot or last the

ability to experience and orgasm to regain that with this device. Yeah, which is pretty amazing. Yeah. Well he named I should say he named the after the the machine and Woody Allen Sleeper nine three, right, But apparently he stumbled upon this idea because he is a pain doctor. But he uses um electrodes in the brain to to cut down on pain and chronic pain patients and he was working on one woman um and apparently during the procedure, so

he knows where the electrodes should go. The patient has to be conscious, so they just give you a local anesthetic and take off the top of your head and then he gets in there and fiddles around. It's like hell Raiser basically right. And as he was doing it, he hit the spot and he said that the um. The patient began to quote exclaim in fat emphatically and he stops him. He's like, what's going on, what's what

are you experiencing? And she's like, you need to teach my husband how to do that, and he's like, huh. People would love this. But I was reading Chuck the Scientific you no New Scientist article on it, and they said that his orgasmatron received a limp reception from the scientific community. They're better than that, they said, limp reception. They're better than that. Apparently not. So we we've covered touch. Touch isn't going to be a very important one pretty soon.

There's this thing called the Illusion VR body Suit, and it's basically a hack together version of what will ultimately be what everybody's wearing in the future, which is a full haptic body suit with VR, which is really important. Next step as well, UM pornography combined with some sort of UM sex toy that works automatically. Yes, yeah, so the idea, I mean, you've heard of Oculus off the you know, probably the most advanced VR system going now,

at least as far as I know. I'm not up to date on the latest with that stuff, but it's

supposed to be great. So you know, you're talking about a future where you, I guess sound is covered that with the invention of headphones, it's kind of all you need there, but throw on the headphones, throw on the Oculus rift uh, strap into your teledul donic system, and you could you know, the range of things that can happen there are either just long distance sex with your lover or potentially weird things like, hey, do you want to have sex with uh Jennifer Lopez, Well, we've got

a program you can pay for and do that, and Jennifer Lopez is really mad, Well yeah, you know, or or UM I think another another potential that a lot of people are worried about from this is is UM VR especially gets more and more realistic. Are people just acting out there just darkest darkest fantasies, and there's a lot of UM. There's a lot of debate right now over ethically, morally and legally how acceptable that is. You know.

So one of the big discussions about UM internet pornography right now is as we're reaching this ability to UM pretty accurately simulate, although a lot of it's not very accurate, like even good c g I is still clearly c g I, and some of it dips into the uncanny valley. But as we pass out of the uncanny valley and get like more and more realistic, the question is is, well, if you have people who UM are engaged in victimizing other people in real life out of compulsion or something

like that. Like there's a lot of debate over whether pedophilia is actually based on brain chemistry, which would take it out of the realm of choice. Right, So, let's say you believe that PEDOPHILIAX people, Yeah, pedophilis pedophiles, that's right.

If you believe that pedophiles don't have a choice in their just their their decisions, their compulsions UM, and that they have to carry this out, it's just basically castrate themselves, is it morally acceptable to give these people a virtual simulation of that, yes, and in which case it will satisfy their compulsion while at the same time preventing them

from carrying out this compulsion in real life. So so in real life no one is being harmed, but you're still giving over a virtual kid for a pedophile to do whatever with. Yeah, that is the slippery uts of slopes, because if someone were to argue that, someone I'm very right fully would argue that who's saying that satisfying that and not building up two act out on that for real?

You know? Yeah, yeah, And that's that's a lot of a lot of concern coming from the other end as well as that, UM as we get more and more into this incredibly rendered um VR sex that you can actually feel in sense and all that as well, that it will you know, the fact that it's VR will make people who otherwise in real life wouldn't have said, well, you know what happens if I um choke this avatar

to death while we're doing it. Let's see what that's like, And then they'll find out that they actually like that and they might want to try it in real life. Oh yeah, I mean as soon as this stuff like is out there, there's gonna be someone selling rape and murder fantasy software and I just don't see how that

could lead to anything good. Well, but that's the I mean, that's the long term debate, you know, Like people have said the thing about violent video games, there's there's never been a body of of study that shows that violent video games actually do lead to increased violence in real life. So I mean, is the same thing true for um, for sex freaky sex. Well, all right, people can turn it off because Chuck's opinion is coming emvoy. People don't

like it when I say opinionated things. Some people do. I don't remember if I covered this much on our on our episode about video game violence, but I've played a lot of violent video games more in the last two years, and my feeling is that you may not be able to pinpoint that as a cause, but I think it can be a factor and a tipping point to someone who was teetering on that edge of carrying

out a violent act. Yeah, that's that's my I firmly believe that because I am a non violent grown man, and when you play these game sames enough, you find yourself driving around and having these thoughts like not that I really would do these things, but they pop into your head, just like the same way used to have Tetris streams. When I played Tetris too much and I would not even dreams like waking dreams. I would walk into a room and see boxes be like, oh, you

could arrange these in a different way. It like has a way of kind of taking your brain over and then you take out your aggression on the box. But I think it definitely absolutely can be a a factor and a tipping point if someone is close. Yeah. Again, I mean it's anecdotal, but you prefaced it with the fact that that's your opinions, just my opinion, but that's your experience too, you know. Yeah. And I'm not saying like band violent video games because like the lion share

of people can play these things with no problem. But uh, I don't know, it's it's tricky. One of the other problems with it, too, Chuck, is that as we get more and more into recreating the sensation of sex through vr UM, the possibility of sexual assault is expected to

just skyrocket. Virtual sexual assault and apparently it's already happened. Um. There's a writer named Jordan bell Air, and she was playing a VR game called quiver Um within multiplayer mode, and she said that um, her voice sold her out as a woman, revealed she was a woman, but other than that, her avatar looked like a man. And then one of the other players just started chasing her and groping her and rubbing her um in her uh where her bathing suit covers and she um. She said that

she felt genuinely violated by it. I'm sure this is without any kind of haptic technology whatsoever. This is strictly visual, and she still felt violated. So we're she wearing like a haptic body suit so she could feel what her avatar was feeling. What's the difference between somebody doing that in real life and somebody doing it virtually, I think to me the answer is is none. There is no difference for the end user, for the the victim is

another way to put it. The victim is going to experiences the same because your brain is relying on sensory input to determine, say, whether a touch is comfortable or welcomed or unwelcomed or violating, and whether it's being recreated by a computer. Your mind isn't going to make any

distinction from that. And you're tho, so the violation is through and through real and and again that there's that potential where because it's not in real life and because of the anonymity that the Internet affords, that the possibility of that happening can just could really explode. Yeah, somebody needs to come up with the game called a game like that called affirmative consent, you know, where everything is

just above board. You introduce yourself and you get to know each other and you say, I like to be your lover. Can I touch you there? Sure? No? Okay, well I'll just back out of the room slowly. So the one thing we haven't talked about is smell as far as sensory experience goes. And some people may uh discount smell or the importance of smell and sexuality, but I have always been long championed smell as the one

of the underrated uh senses when it comes to sexy times. Uh. And if you do think, oh, like it's not the big of a deal, think about if you've ever had a time or smell has ruined something in sexy time. So if you do like think smells not that big of a deal. We're not. Just don't think of just good smells, like oh, somebody's perfumer cologne, like, think of like bad smells. How that can turn something wrong. Well, Robert actually makes a pretty good point in this article.

He says that one out of every fifty gens lover in the human genome concern sense, yeah, or smell. The sense of smell. Yeah. I think every husband has been told at some point, like, why don't you go take a shower first? You know you were you were just working in the yard. Sure, there's nothing sexy about that. Yeah, except the smell of grass is pretty great to grass um. But there was a company chuck a few years back.

I think they went under around two thousand one or two thousand two, and the company is called digit Sense, and they had something called the I Smell and it was connected to your computer. And the whole idea was that they had to say, you know how, you have cyan magenta um colors, yellow, and black? Is that right? C M y K Yeah, And you can make millions millions of colors based from those four pigments. These guys

were trying to do the same thing with smells. Come up with four basic sense that you could make virtually any smell with right, and uh, it's amazing. It's so sad to me that they it didn't go anywhere, but it's like, come back, digit sense, do it now, like

we're ready. Yeah, this would be so amazing if like the whole thing was, you'd be on the Internet and there'd be a little, um, a little pixel on the web page that triggered your eye smell to produce a certain sent It sent the information how long it should be there for, how intense whatever. So you're looking at elephant pictures and you can smell the elephant poop right there in the room with Yeah, there's this other cool

aspect Robert points out to which is um. The addition of this smell and taste to this experience and touch even it lightens the burden on the visuals. So it's something called cross mode all attention effects uh in in science communities, and it basically it's the way the brain prioritizes century input. UM. Like you know, if you're sitting on this and this is a great example uses if you're sitting on the sofa and you're just sitting there, you might feel the sense of the sofa cushion under

your arm and under your butt. But then someone comes over and kisses you, and your brain goes, well, hey, and you don't feel the sofa cushion under your butt anymore. You feel the lips against your lover's lips, and your bow tie spins around. But that's the real thing. It's cross model attention effects. It's like literally the brain prioritizing uh,

sensory input. Yeah, and apparently also one of the aspects of it too, is that when you have the more senses you have giving you information about a particular thing, the less any one particular sense has to carry the load. And again, up to this point, our sense of vision and our sense of hearing have been doing all of the heavy lifting. So if you add smell, if you managed to add taste, if you managed to add touch, the the like, just how visually stunning the the VR

pornography has to be. Is it comes down several notches. It doesn't have to be as good because these other senses are making up the slack. Well, I mean, phone sex was just audio, right, I mean I said, was imagine that's still a thing, But um, did you ever see Shortcuts the Robert Altman movie. Remember Jennifer Jason Lee was a phone sex operator. She's like, you know, feeding her baby and ironing, and like her husband's in the other Chrispin is in the other room. God rest his soul.

Oh Chris Pinn died huh two thousand and sixteen. Oh no, no, no, no, years ago, Crispin. Yeah, but anyway, that was always kind of thought. That was funny. Like anyone who thinks the phone sex person is is right enjoying themselves like you are. They really sold themselves. Uh. And Robert, I do want to read this one great sentence from his article here. Uh, there are people at the University of York's audio laboratory who are working to employ this cross model attention effects

and really just fine tune it all. And he said here in his last sentence, They've even considered employing a mouthpiece to simulate different textures against the tongue in mouth for virtual food chewing, they claim. M Man. Then, then I think Robert navigated some pretty tricky waters himself. Now he did, well, it's a good article. I just yeah, yeah, the lover's thing. Yeah, uh, you got anything else, no, sir? Uh?

We'll want to give a shout out to um Tracy Clark Floory from Vocative for the UH the Ethics of of VR sex stuff, UM kill Kei rou who gave us the televildonic stuff, and of course are and Robert Lamb who wrote the whole article. Right, yeah, stuff to blow your mind. Did good show. If you want to know more about future sex, you can type those words into the search bar and what comes up will be wowee wow wow. And since I said that it's time for listener mail, I'm doing something I out normally do

because I didn't have one prepared. I'm just gonna randomly pull one up. We have to do administrative details against soon. Yeah, I'm gotting some good stuff. By the way, thank you to the people that send an emails saying that UH an English speaker saying junta is completely correct. Whatever I know. You like to show off your your flair. You're Latin American flair. My my heat, my Latin heat. All right? I found one, Hey, guys for starters. I love the show. I got hooked on s U s K. People still

do that occasionally. It's funny. Uh SUSK and even had iTunes to do the download all and I'm turning through them all. Just got done listening to the soilent episode and the listener mail. You mentioned how the breastfeeding episode was so well received, So was there an episode and stuff you should know history, he said, s Y s K. The second time, by the way, that was chock full of hate mail. Would be a cool factoid of what your greatest bomb was. Maybe parallel that with your top

five shows of all time to smooth it over. Well, I'm not gonna do that, but it's a lot of asks. Yeah that is from John uh Navicus Navicus and um boy. You know what, we got a lot of bad mail recently about artificial sweeteners. I've noticed. Oh yeah, yeah, people are kind of mad. Some people are I think they're all like Um from the Splendid Family. But yeah, that one set people off to an extent. We also got

a lot out of kudos for that one. The one John Um to me that stands out that we got the most hate mail for UM is not necessarily our biggest bomb, but it was homelessness or homelessness episode. Sure, we got tons and tons and tons of negative emails from people who are basically like homeless people are there because they're lazy. Stop telling people to be nice to them. And uh, probably more than any other episode we've ever done. I would say that's the one that has that we

got the most hate mail for. What about You? Uh yeah probably so, Um, yeah, I think so. I think objectively, that is the one by far that we got the most hate mail for. Yeah, and we've been on record about that, and we even got a mail just last week about that episode saying, hey, I know you guys get a lot of flak for this one, and they send us an email of support, which is nice. Thank you to whoever wrote that. That was very nice. Yeah.

So I'm gonna say artificial sweeteners and homelessness. Uh yeah, It's not like those emails like made me reconsider my stance on how I feel about homeless people or whatever. But it just sucks to hear angry stuff from that many people about something that you think is kind of brain dead, you know. Um, well, all right, if you want to get in touch with us, like John did, thanks for the email, John, you can tweet to us. I'm at Josh M clark and at s Y s

K podcast. Chuck's at Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and that Stuff you Should Know on Facebook. You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has always hang out with us at our home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff Works dot com