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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Thanks to developments in the field of "teledildonics," quick and easy cybersex is becoming an option for anyone with a mouse. Could Internet-enabled sex toys soon become must-haves for online daters?
Aug 29, 2005 | On a recent muggy Monday, I was sitting at my desk in Brooklyn pondering an odd request from Amir Vatan, a man I'd never met before. He wanted to know if I would rotate his shaft.
Looking out from my computer screen was the fully clothed Vatan, a goateed 30-year-old lazily rocking back and forth in an office chair in California. He was cradling the phone to his ear and holding a pink and purple dildo at eye level.
"Can you do it?" he asked.
The shaft in his hand started gyrating according to the movement of my mouse over a control panel on my screen.
"Yes!" he said.
Encouraged, I then made the dildo's pronglike "clit tickler" (shaped like bunny ears) pulsate. Then I wiggled the head again.
A moment of odd pride enveloped me. How many women can say they've been a dick?
Vatan and I had arranged this weirdly intimate encounter so he could demonstrate the kinky technological offerings from HighJoy.com, his 4-month-old dating site. Unlike other matchmaking sites, High Joy provides forums where singles (or married folk, as the case may be) can chat with each other live, as well as see their partners and hear their partners (if they have an Internet camera and microphone). And if they've purchased one of the male or female versions of the Doc Johnson HighJoy-enabled sex toys, partners can also rotate each other's shafts.
Since Howard Rheingold discussed the field of "teledildonics" in his 1991 book "Virtual Reality" and hypothesized we'd all have "portable telediddlers" by 2020, a plethora of mostly unreliable, clunky Internet sex toys have entered the market. The sensor-packed full-body "Cyber Sex Suit" became a flaccid venture in 2000, when the company couldn't assure the Federal Trade Commission that the suit wouldn't cause heart attacks. Soon afterwards, a sex toy that could be operated by brightening and dimming a computer screen got bland reviews.
The one major success has been the Sinulator, a wireless adaptor that can transform almost any sex toy into one that can be used over the Internet. The Sinulator is user friendly -- it's operated through the Sinulate site, therefore requiring no downloads -- and, aside from the initial cost of the adaptor ($119.95 including two free vibrating bullets that can be inserted into many toys), it's free to use. Sinulators started out being mostly used by companies that train cameras on live "webcam girls"; site visitors are charged extra to manipulate a girl's -- or sometimes guy's -- dildo over the Internet.
HighJoy, however, represents a real shift in teledildonics: It's reaching beyond the realm of late-night porn surfers to a much wider audience. There's not a porn-site ad to be seen on its pages. The site and toys are instead being marketed to a heretofore overlooked population: people who want to have sex with other people in the hopes of possibly founding or furthering a relationship.
