Futuristic Sex Robots Now Just "Sex Robots" 602
High-C writes "With apologies to Futuristic Sex Robotz, the future is here, and her name is Roxxxy. Truecompanion.com has revealed their answer to the Real Doll, and it looks nice. The site is short on details, pictures, pricing info, but wow." NOTE: some of the above links are not work-safe, for many values of work. I stopped by this exhibit today at the AVN Expo (not officially a part of CES, but by curious coincidence scheduled to coincide; the old saw that porn drives tech isn't without merit). Roxxxy, though, was rather unsexily posed on a couch, not moving a bit — downright creepy, in fact.
O RLY? (Score:1, Interesting)
I suddenly feel a little bit smug having only spent $25 on my vibrator, and the occasional pocket change on lotion and AA batteries. Why anyone would spend hundreds of dollars on a sex toy is beyond me. It feels good to be a girl right now. ^___^
Re:This thread is worthless without pics (Score:1, Interesting)
Half a dozen links and I couldn't find one pic of the damn robot. If it was that "creepy" posing on the couch, how could you not at least snap a picture?
Here's a bunch of pics to make this thread worthwhile:
http://www.69adget.com/true-companion-sex-robot-roxxxy/ [69adget.com]
Re:O RLY? (Score:4, Interesting)
I suddenly feel a little bit smug having only spent $25 on my vibrator, and the occasional pocket change on lotion and AA batteries. Why anyone would spend hundreds of dollars on a sex toy is beyond me. It feels good to be a girl right now. ^___^
It's like any other hobby - you can spend as much or as little as you want on it; with varying results. I'm sure a guy can save themselves a considerable amount over the cost of one of these dolls by buying a Fleshlight. Meanwhile, a girl might want to spend more than your toy's ticket price on a Symbian. And there's undoubtedly whole lines of mass-produced, small-run production, and custom equipment out there for every aspect of human sexuality.
It's about luxury, I guess? (Score:5, Interesting)
Granted, the fleshlight [fleshlight.com] is a little over twice as expensive, but it's still in about the same range, and it is (more or less) the same kind of toy -- a disembodied genital.
Now, the TrueCompanion website doesn't list a price, and I assume it would be much higher. For comparison, it looks like the Female RealDoll [realdoll.com] runs around $5k or $6k... But they have Male ones [realdoll.com], too, and they aren't cheaper, unless you go for the disembodied torso.
And a Sybian [sybian.com] is a little over $1k.
So no, I don't think it really says all that much. I mean, I do agree with you about this:
Why anyone would spend hundreds of dollars on a sex toy is beyond me.
...though probably for a reason you wouldn't like: If I was that desperate, a prostitute is probably more cost-effective and convenient, and I'd rather not do either. But I don't really see anything about this to make one gender better or worse... ...though I suspect that far more women own vibrators than men own any sex toy. Maybe we make up for it in pornography?
I recommend just giving them a miss entirely (Score:3, Interesting)
It is a site that occasionally has moments of brilliance, but it by far outweighed by a mountain of pure stupidity. It really isn't worth your time, even without malware.
Teleoperation (Score:3, Interesting)
So you build male/female pairs of robots with wifi and an ssh tunnel connecting them. Throw out the AI and substitute it with a teleoperation setup. You would need some sort of body motion capture suit at each end as well. Aim for low latency but I don't see it as too much of a big deal. Pay Woody Allen to promote it.
Now you don't have to worry about being away from your loved one when working and studying overseas.
Ending human trafficking for the forced sex trade (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny thing, I was just at an academic presentation on human trafficking connected with the sex trade a couple of weeks ago. I made the observation that the thing that had tended to lead to the complete end of other forms of extreme exploitation (slavery, debt bondage, and similar forms of unfree labour) was the mechanization of whatever it was that people were being forced to do, and that so far mechanizing human sexuality had proved difficult.
So I think it's fantastic that these companies are continuing to push the limits of exactly what range of basic human needs can be met through mechanization, because if there's ever eventually a product that genuinely meets this need for a large enough number of people, it'll basically end the economic viability of forced sex labour. Note that it doesn't have to meet these needs for everyone, just for enough people that setting up the infrastructure for forced sex work is no longer economically viable.
I also wonder if there'll ever be a crossover point where having a 'real doll' will be something that people are comfortable disclosing - kind of like the crossover that occurred sometime in the late 1990s - early 2000s with online dating in North America. In the 80s and earlier (for those of you who are too young to remember), meeting people online or through newspaper ads was something that was kind of desperate-seeming and embarrassing and something that people who'd met that way tended to 'hide' by making up some other story about how they'd met. Now it's basically normative, and it's rare to find people unwilling to say they met through an online dating service. Likewise, women owning vibrators went from being something no-one admitted to, to something that second-wave feminism made normative and no big deal (witness many of the comments about vibrators already in this thread, most of which aren't from 'anonymous cowards').
Anyway, I think it's going to be an interesting decade or so for people interested in the interactions between human sexuality and the labour market.
Re:We had sex robots for a long, long time (Score:1, Interesting)
A vibrator cannot make me a sandwich, therefore it is not a true companion.
Re:holy shit (Score:5, Interesting)
You joke, but it's a really good questions. A "seemingly 13 year old" sex robot would definitely be illegal in UK, for example, but what about US? If it would be legal, I can't wait to see the shitstorm that happens when someone actually has one made.
Re:It's about luxury, I guess? (Score:3, Interesting)
Unless you share and/or have a very... interesting toy.
chobits!
Spirit of the Age... (Score:5, Interesting)
Hawkwind... Spirit of the Age...
I think there might be a reason for it (Score:5, Interesting)
All joking aside, I think the strong reaction by women against love robots for men stems from a perceived difference in what sex means for men and women.
Most women want something more then pure sex. And this is proving very hard to get, as most men just want them for sex. So the vibrator is NOT a replacement for what women want.
But a sex robot WOULD be a replacement for what men want.
Men are already obsolete. They can use a vibrator for penetration, spermbank for babies, and a dog for sleeping on the couch. And yet, women still want men. Desperate enough that many put up with abuse just to have one.
Women are not yet obsolete. There is nothing as soft as a woman, we can't have babies, and a cat is to affectionate and emotionally reliable.
But a robot that is close enough for sex... that could mess relationships up. How many of us guys (especially when we were young) put up with women just for the sex? Say you can get exactly the same without the real human being... would you still date (or for us /.ers attempt to date)?
Don't say that you need the human companionship. Especially us techies have consistently tried to remove the human factor from daily interactions. Ticket machines instead of a manned counter. Text-messaging instead of talking to someone. Discussing the days events on a website rather then with friends. Playing against bits rather then against human people in the same room.
So I get it that vibrators are more accepted. For most women, they are NOT a replacement for a male partner.
Re:O RLY? (Score:1, Interesting)
All the gay bars I went to with a female, we were both more then welcome. The moment I said I was not gay, there was no problem.
All the lesbian bars I went to with a female, people either asked me to leave or treated me like I was raping women on the bar (if I was allowed to enter in the first place)
That's because men, generally speaking, are seen as predators, and women as prey. I'm not saying this is true; just that many (most?) people see it that way.
Imagine a bunch of foxes declare they have no interest in hens. They meet up, and a hen walks in there as well. No problem - the hen obviously doesn't prey on foxes, and the foxes have already declared they're not interested in the hen, either.
Now imagine some hens declare they're not interested in foxes. They meet up, and a fox walks in as well. The difference is that even though the hens still have no interest in the fox, the fox, as a predator, has an interest in the hens.
This is how these things are seen, generally speaking. It's unfair, of course, and it IS sexist, but it's not a fault of the "lesbian community" as much as of society as a whole, because the whole "men are predators, women are prey" thing is a very general meme permeating all of society.
Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, I haven't seen the new Holmes movie, but I think alot of people don't give the Will Smith version of I, Robot the credit it deserves.
First, it's very much in keeping with the stories of the I, Robot book in two ways. First, it's an exploration of how the three laws might actually wind up working out. Second, it's a detective story. The original stories were all a robot acting, seemingly, against the laws, and somebody needing to figure out why. And usually, it wound up being that the humans simply wern't understanding how the rules worked in a given situation.
Second, the movie really does explore some interesting ideas. Will's character being bitter that a robot followed the rules, resulting in the death of a child. A robot reasoning that in order to keep humanity safe, humanity has to be controlled. Note that the 'evil' robots never ever raise a hand to any human who isn't actively resisting, for example. Or with Sonny, the idea that a genius or a revoluationary is somebody able to break free of the thinking of their contemporaries. Or, when he's going to be reformatted, the idea of 'what is sentience? What is life?' If Sonny walks, acts, and quacks like a duck, is he a duck? If he walks, acts, and thinks like a human, or even appears to, does he have the same basic worth or status as a human? The 'Can you compose a symphony?' 'No, detective. Can you?' line was beautiful.
I'm not saying it's a masterpiece for the ages or anything, but it's a perfectly good film, raises (or restates) some interesting issues, and isn't completely un-Asimovish.
Re:Obligatory (Score:3, Interesting)
The biggest problem with the movie, is one you didn't address. The movie is racist.
The movie is a thin allegory about the slavery of the black man by the white man, and the white mans fear of a justifiable slave rebellion and *retribution* which (historically) never happened.
This makes it amusing that they give the racist role to a black guy.
What's not funny, is that it basically tells the racists who feared the slaves retribution, that they were *right* to fear it! We all have to *keep* those darn robots down, and never let them be free, because if we don't, they'll kill us all in our beds!
If it were made today, doubtless there'd be characters saying robots should never get the vote because "One day, there could even be a socialist muslim robot as President!"
Re:holy shit (Score:3, Interesting)
If that's not what you meant, how do you figure that getting an outlet for ones urges somehow makes a person even more desperate?
There are really two ways of looking at this. One the one hand, like you said, it could be "an outlet for urges". On the other hand, it could enhance the urge for "the real thing", or make the pedo think that the next step isn't so "big" (yes, its a slippery slope argument, but not all slippery slopes are imaginary.)
I think this is something psychologists/psychiatrists needs to weigh in on, and not leave it to "common sense."
Re:O RLY? (Score:1, Interesting)
So, here's what you do, you tell that bitch to shut up and remind her how fucking amazing you are and you do it constantly. Then, be unavailable and don't return her calls for a few days. then show up at 2am and knock the bottom out one night.
women arent that complicated most men are just fucking morons with no skills for observation.