5. Alien sex is frightening.

Besides having sex with your sweetheart online or tracking down a stranger through a matchmaking service, you can also just do it solo. SafeSexPlus offers an "autopilot mode" which will randomly vary the intensity of your toy's action. Digital Sexsations partners offer erotic stories online (aka "Buzz Books") that will control your sex toys: As you're reading the story, click on a word and it will send signals to your vibrator. The phrase "back and forth she rolled it," for example, induced steady, gentle vibrations from Le Bullette; "sucks it deeply" creates harder pulsing vibrations and "shoved it as deep into her as it would go" caused my little green plastic dynamo to shake so hard that I could barely hold it.

But the available stories are a quirky lot that won't necessarily titillate everyone. "Spiraling Desire," one of several Digital Sexsations-enhanced stories from DigitalErotica.net, features a woman being raped by an alien: "Ohmygod, she thought as he ripped off the robe and exposed his mottled skin, his enormous, bloated braincase shelved above beady eyes shrouded in black membrane. But as usual her eyes drifted to where they always wanted to go -- she never did have the power to circumvent her 'free' will -- and she saw what she always searched for, that being a cock, of course."

Is this erotica, or horror?

6. Customer support is going to be a problem.

Somehow, it takes the excitement out of cybersex when you call the customer support number of, say, SafeSexPlus, after tussling for an hour with your software, in order to figure out why the personalized IP address that is supposed to let your partner remotely control your toy isn't working, and the customer support person doesn't call back until two days later. (She left a perky voice mail message offering only the comment that "It should work, just try it again!" Gosh, thanks but I'm no longer in the mood.)

7. Cybersex isn't very sexy.

Something about the tangle of wires and devices and serial ports and ugly vibrating toys takes all the romance out of cyberdildonics, which, perhaps, is why I couldn't motivate my Mac-centric partner to run out and borrow a PC so that we could try it out. The world of remote-controlled cybersex is not sexy, sensitive or titillating in any way. It's smutty, plastic, mechanical and rather tacky. It actually feels a bit desperate, much along the lines of anonymous sex with someone named 36DDwantsU in a chat room or trashy online pics of pneumatic blondes with legs a-spread or even a dog-eared copy of Barely Legal magazine -- they can send off vaguely trashy vibes that get you off but they don't compare to the real thing.

Currently cyberdildonics is merely machine-enhanced masturbation, much like traditional cybersex. You will still be holding your own vibrator in one hand and typing with the other, the only difference being that the person on the other end can control whether your toy whirs softly or if it will shimmy out of control. (And, as some will tell you, even this may not even be an impovement: When it comes to hypersensitive genitalia, it is often far more effective to control your own electronics than to let someone else try to figure it out.) Cyberdildonics is still far more like having sex with an electronic device than with a human.

But these products are merely version 1.0. The odds are good that the sex industry, always so inventive with new ways to turn people on, will keep trying to build better cybersex products. Will we ever see a suit that plugs in to the network and delivers gentle stimulation to all our erogenous zones, accurately simulating the sensation of wet tongues and soft fingers, of skin against skin? A cyberdildonics kit that includes goggles to let you see and hear your lover in full 3D glory? Will some future technologist invent a machine as gentle as lips?

Perhaps the technology will advance to a level in which cybersex is as satisfying as the real thing; if it does, it will bring up new questions concerning the nature of sex itself. Could the human touch be exchanged for machine interfaces? If so, it could be the end of romance: Cyberdildonics is, ultimately, more about control of another human being -- the sexual equivalent of a radio-controlled hot rod -- than sensuality. Artificial distance and blunt remote controls forbid the meeting of eyes, subtle unspoken communications and the nuance of imagination. Yes, you may still be having "sex," but you'll be missing these, the greatest sex organs of all.

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