Originally published 23 March 1992
It’s spring — officially, at least — and a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of…
Cybersex.
Step into my cyberary — not a library, we have no books here — and select a Sensory Feedback Module from my collection of erotic cyberware. Slip the module into my IRD — Interactive ReCreative Device — my cyber simulator. Put on 4‑D Goggles, Dreamsole shoes, Globesweep Gloves. You are ready — for sex, like you’ve never had it before.
Enter hyperspace with the partner of your choice. How about that lovely young thing from the centerfold? Feed her photo into the scanner, along with a snapshot of yourself. Set the computer to ReCreate, then to Multiple-Image Copy. Would you like her to be a little blonder, taller, more buxom? Just tap a few keys on the keyboard. And yourself — would you prefer to be younger, more vigorous, a fuller head of hair? Click, click, click. Ah, perfect.
Welcome, friends, to sex in the year 2007, or at least the latest variation on the male pornographic fantasy, as described in a new novel by British writer Maggie Gee, Christopher and Alexandra. This is fully interactive cybersex — the sights, sounds, motions, and tactile sensations, all simulated electronically, taking place in a “virtual reality” that exists only inside a computer.
Every motion of your hands is translated by your Globesweep gloves to the hands of your virtual self. Wiggle your toes in your Dreamsole shoes; your virtual self wiggles his toes too. Click, click, click — you are as handsome as Michael Douglas, but — click, click, click — as rippling with muscles as Schwarzenegger. Your partner’s every response is displayed as real as life in your 4‑D Goggles.
Are you ready? It is only a decade-and-a-half away.
Want to see what 21st century cybersex will be like? Check out The Lawnmower Man, a [1992] movie based on a Stephen King short story. Pierce Brosnan plays a scientist experimenting with drugs and computer simulations to increase the intelligence of a gardener named Jobe. In one sequence of the film, Jobe and his girlfriend engage in chip-sizzling cybersex, an encounter that takes place in virtual reality.
Of course, what we are seeing in the movie is not virtual reality, but a simulation of virtual reality using state-of-the-art computer graphics — a simulation of a simulation. When the real thing comes along you will view the action in the privacy of your own home with holographic realism. And you’ll not just view the action, you’ll participate in it, with every movement of your body electronically in touch with the steamy action unfolding in the computer.
The idea of cybersex has been around for a while as a stock narrative theme in science fiction. Now, with novels like Christopher and Alexandra and films like The Lawnmower Man the idea has moved into the mainstream.
Cybersex is an idea whose time has come.
Already a host of erotic software for home computers is in the marketplace. Sex by modem is all the rage — we saw it up last week on LA Law. FAX sex is commonplace. A bestselling novel called Vox is all about telephone sex. Video cassettes bring X‑rated eroticism into the bedroom. Fiber optic cables, satellite links, and floppy disk drives are humming with electronic hanky-panky.
The requisite technologies for cybersex are falling into place. The made-to-purpose computers. The high-resolution, full-color computer graphics. The software. The sensors for translating body movements into computer information.
Pilots use virtual reality simulations to learn how to fly. Surgeons hone their skills on virtual cadavers. Video arcades are introducing virtual reality games. It is not hard to imagine that by the year 2007 Interactive ReCreative Cybersex Devices, with their assorted sensory paraphernalia, will be as common as Nintendos.
With cybersex, you won’t have to worry about love going stale, or boredom, or fatigue. Just listen to Christopher of Maggie Gee’s novel, a cybersex freak at the age of 72: “When I’m using, I never feel old. With IRD I can be anything I wish. And with anyone I wish, and do anything I wish.”
Christopher’s younger but wiser friend Mary chides him for his compulsive habit. “To me it’s a con,” she says, “inhuman, hateful.”
Well, yes, Mary, it is a con, but after all this is the 21st century, and— alas — we surrendered the natural to the artificial a long time ago. Remember those teen-aged boys back in the early 90s? Were they outside playing ball in the sandlot, or were they glued in front of the video watching Terminator II? Are the Nintendo generation going to be happy with old-fashioned sex when they can pop in a Sensory Feedback Module and experience anything their cyberhearts desire?
It’s sad, Mary, but the purveyors of virtual reality are in the ascendancy, thumbing their hyperreal noses at romance and tradition. Us old-fashioned folks who prefer the sometimes-flawed but always human reality of ordinary sex have become as rare as a young man’s springtime flights of fancy.
