Sex and Robots

In a shift from the boardroom to the bedroom, this weeks robot thoughts take on a cheeky vibe as I begin my final quarter before turning 40. My 30’s started with the aim of bringing tech to sex (thank you Ann Summers), and my 40’s starts out with the aim of bringing sex appeal to tech.  What comes around algo’s around. With Augmented/Virtual Reality (VR) set to reach a $150bn industry by 2020. We are seeing huge developments in the colourful world of techno-sexuality. Advances in wearable tech combined with mind-blowing developments in materials such as that behind the Octobot leads us to some interesting questions about what it will mean to be intimate in the bedroom of the future. So what are your private thoughts about virtual reality sex (better than real) or augmented sex (a better real)? By looking at what can be synthesised it really challenges us to define what it means to be human. And at the various stages of our life span, where sex and intimacy will mean different things to us.

In my time as Head of Training for Ann Summers I had the privilege of hearing and reading the heartfelt correspondence from women and couples who had re/found their sex life due to the help of our ‘intimate tech’. A sex toy is the ultimate example of human/technology integration surely? The history of vibrators goes a long way back, so back in the 19th century women were already experimenting with what I call the Carbon/Silicon Symbiosis! This is the term I use to describe how we need to create mutually beneficial, symbiotic relationships between us carbon-based humans, and our silicon-based technology. Not sure the ‘Carbon/Silicon Symbiotic Pocket Lover’ would have sold as a product name, but you get my drift. 

The domestic sex toy industry is a fascinating and enormous topic, but viewing it through my robot lens, part of the allure of sextech’s seduction, is the fact that it can only deliver an optimal outcome and will maintain the user in the driving seat. Sometimes the human body lets us down (we are fallible beings after all), and sometimes they fake (just ask Harry as he met Sally) and sometimes they don’t call you the day after. So for many individual female customers, a sex toy can provide an emotionally safer and physically more secure way to feel more human in that moment.

So, does a (straight) woman need a physical man in her life any more? Isn’t it interesting how the dialogue in the press has revolved around Men vs Machine? (Warning: Don’t Google ‘women vs machine’ whilst your kids or parents are around!) Furthermore… and this is slightly controversial – but could an unintended consequence of tech invented, researched and developed within the male-biased field of computing, actually be that the traditional ‘man-jobs’ are actually more at risk of automation than traditional ‘woman-jobs’?

Big questions. Small anecdote: although women would write in sharing how their lives had been enhanced by their relationship with their new toy, I never once heard about anyone taking their Rampant Rabbit back home to meet the family! So there are still some occasions where only another human will do. In fact, some physical sensations do require another human – apparently we cannot tickle ourselves: our brain’s cerebellum will predict a movement that we are in charge of and so will cancel out the tickle sensation.  So if you were wondering what us humans might be doing in the bedroom of the future, it might revolve around tickling and hand-holding; back to first base as the drones deliver the breakfast. Anyone looking to invest in a ‘TickleBot’ should probably back out now.

To summarise. In our intimate technology choices, as well as our industrial ones I suggest this: Why fight? We need to relate. No-one can run faster than a robot, so lets not waste our energy trying to compete. But can a robot make eye contact, ask a poignant question and listen with full heart to the response quite like us? Not yet. So lets direct our energy to this warm, soft and wet stuff. We are 70% water-based after all.

Robots are awesome; humans are phenomenal (as long as we don’t switch off)

p.s  the robots are coming, look busy [insert pun here]

Laura Thomson-Staveley is founder and leadership coach at Phenomenal Training and co-host of Secrets from A Coach podcast. For more information visit: phenomenaltraining.com and secretsfromacoach.com