ANIMAL SEX OUT -- IN-VITRO BIRTH IN
Since time began, humans have been enjoying sex in the same physical
manner as the rest of the animals.
Within 35 years, some humans, the top-brain/lower brain avant garde,
will acquire new sexual habits. Virtual reality (VR), perhaps with
full holographic projection, will offer a higher level of physical
sensation and emotional feeling than the original programmed-bynature survival procedure. VR sexual activity will become totally
protected, even in electronic group and mixed-sexual-preference situations. The ease and fantasy opportunities of global interaction will
cause a swing towards this more elegant, less messy modus operandi.
Techno-peasants will be the last to try.
Almost total reduction in exposure to AIDS among that segment of
society engaging in VR activity will provide confidence and security
unavailable to people still operating at the mere physical animal
level. The same slogan that is important with forthcoming "personal"
robots, "Once you own them, don't clone them or loan them", will
apply to loaning personal "passion-transceiver outfits". The whole
procedure may cover all segments of society. Could not such a "cloak
of passion" be provided, with church approval, to celibate priests
who could actually have an experience with their Mary Magdalene? A
virtual reality encounter with any religion's particular deity might
do wonders for the clergy and for church attendance.
Childbirth will become an in-vitro scientific procedure, outside the
womb, using the latest gene manipulation techniques, thus minimizing
the number of disease-prone citizens. Health-care and birth-control
costs, along with medical insurance premiums, will plummet.
Countries that resist such steps towards newer forms of sexual
virtual reality will suffer waning economic and political power, and
rising health and social costs, while healthier populations elsewhere
prosper.
This is not some vague contemplation. The structure for a form of
such sexual activity, named "teledildonics", is underway in several
American states and in other countries. Toronto futurist Bob Russell
wrote an essay on the subject way back in the early 1970s. The
concept was quickly picked up by the Japanese, reprinted in
scientific journals and elsewhere.
All this is just what, in an age of AIDS, is a search for safe sex
substitutes. Tomorrow this will be considered a normal progression
from the communications of using a phone (as in "Telepersonals"),
soft or hard-porn television to computer porn and electronicallymodulated vibrators. Safe sex sells. It will eventually force the
introduction and main-stream acceptance of in-vitro ("in-glass,
artificially maintained") child birth.
NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) started it all
with their Project Telepresence, whereby a physician or technician on
earth could operate on a human patient or a damaged component on an
space station. The procedure required the operator to wear a suit,
similar to a scuba diving outfit, with numerous sensors that conveyed
the operator's movements and vision to the designated robot or
android's location. The on-location "surgeon" would also be wearing
transceiving sensors, complete with video camera, to relay surgical
movements back to earth, for monitoring by the original instigator of
the transmission. Each could watch the other in almost instantaneous
action. Once that was possible, others looked around for the next
possibility. They didn't have far to look.
Soon the nucleus of an industry started to form. Some classified the
whole extremely realistic procedure as artificial or virtual reality.
For those who had previously experienced a psychedelic experience
during the 1960s, the similarity quickly became apparent. "It's
electronic LSD" was not an unusual comment. A trip without the danger
could be in big demand.
Today this industry, albeit nascent, is well underway. In Japan, the
Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MIDI), the government
office instrumental in herding much of Japan Inc. into the 21st
century, has declared VR a field of prime importance for years ahead.
In the U.S. it has brought together what previously would have been
considered strange bedfellows ... ex-military "think tank" personnel,
colorful individualistic entrepreneurs, staid and proper investors
and businessmen, psychologists, space engineers, jet jockeys and
silicon shamen. VR will be one of THE industries for the next two
decades.
Italian couturiers, those fashion wizards so familiar with fabrics
and design for contouring human anatomy, have already created a "body
stocking" so thin the piezoelectric vibrotactile actuators it
contains will allow anyone or "thing" wearing a compatible, interconnected similar garment to appear as physically and emotionally as
close as desired, regardless of actual geographical space limitations. Such clothing could contain site-specific "after burners"
to enhance such encounters.
Try to think back to the days when "print" only appeared on paper and
had to be sent, first by messenger and then via mail. After Samuel
Morse, words traveled by telegraph, telex and television much more
swiftly. Pictures then took the same route. Now the feelings, both
emotional and physical that go with those words, along with images of
physical endowments and passions will shortly be electronically
communicated from Venice to Vancouver, from Singapore to San Francisco and from the continual summer of the Sahara to the sunless
winter of the Arctic on command ... for a price.
Travel, long associated with romance, will take on new meaning.
* * *
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