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With that as conceptual background, it's easy to imagine a magical
teledildonics in which the experience and the interface is effortless,
responsive to biofeedback, and truly becomes something in which
your every wish is your teledildonics equipment's command. The
reality, at least at this stage of the game, is quite different.
There's hardware to install. There's software and downloads to
deal with. There's a new graphical user interface to learn. And
for me at least, the sex toy end of things just didn't toast my
Pop-Tarts. There is, in short, a decidedly bubblebursting distance
between what I imagine as the cybersex of the future and what's
currently available in the teledildonics realm.
But before I throw the baby out with the bathwater, time for the
details. I tried out the Digital Sexations kit, courtesy of the
good folks at www.feelthe.net, which arrived on my doorstep with CD-ROM software (Edx. Note: Quite late, due to Heather Corinna's procrastination
and general insolence), a rather cryptical little four-ported Black Box with serial
cord to plug into my PC's serial port, a power supply for the
Black Box, and a rather aggressively lime-green hard plastic ovoid
vibrator, modified to be plugged into the Black Box. Amusingly,
the box the vibrator comes in (admittedly not a production of
the Digital Sexations folks), calls the vibe "Le Bulletté," advising
a pronunciation of same that would induce apoplexy in the entire
Académie Française. I was unable to convince my penis-owning significant other to
attempt the strap gizmo that is supposed to strap the vibrator
to the underside of an erect penis, alas, but otherwise, everything
got tested.
Installation was pleasantly simple (a definite point in the manufacturer's
favor), and learning the interface was easy, too. From the configuration
of the interface and the Black Box I learned that one can plug
up to four separate toys into the Black Box, theoretically allowing
you to stimulate up to four areas of the body simultaneously.
Nice idea, but honestly I'm not sure how practical this is unless
you hire an assistant to help you hold the things in place or
nurse an unusual affection for using duct tape on your tender
naked flesh. Perhaps I am simply not sufficiently resourceful.
The vibrator itself was more powerful than I thought it would
be. I was very skeptical, since I haven't found a battery-operated
vibe (aside from Pocket Rockets) that has worked for me in a very
long time, but the motor in this one wasn't bad. Still not up
to Magic Wand standards, and I am a devout Magic Wand grrl, but
it wasn't wimpy, either.
The problem wasn't the motor, it was the construction of the vibe's
case. It's hard plastic, which I really, truly, honestly, deeply
dislike. Hard plastic vibrators are like having an overcaffienated
Weeble on your clit. Not a very pretty picture, is it?
Also, like many mid-price conventional sex toys (i.e., mass-manufacture,
not made by highly clued-in toy companies), this vibe is not designed
with easy cleaning n mind. The casing is two pieces of plastic
with a seam in between that would easily accumulate effluvia,
and there is a hole in the casing where the cord goes in to the
motor which likewise is not easily cleanable. I stuck mine in
an unlubricated condom, the fuckmeister's equivalent of a good
pair of galoshes, and kept it nice 'n' tidy.
However, a well-engineered gasket in both locations, flush with
the case surface, would be a good addition. An even better addition
would be an easily-removable vibrator sheath or cover... perhaps
one made of my favorite sex-toy material, Cyberskin, which would
address the hardness problem too? I haven't reviewed the other
toys that are available for use with this setup, but I'd think
the manufacturers would do well to troubleshoot any similar problems
in the rest of their line.
So that's the hardware. The software was simple and relatively
easy to negotiate, even the first time. So the proof of the pudding
was in the interactivity.
Now, I've been around the cybersexual block many a time. I've
written about it, I've given interviews about it. And in truth,
I haven't been compelled toward cybersex now for a couple of years.
So I was interested to find out whether or not this gizmo was
going to add enough of a new dimension to the whole experience
that it would reawaken my currently dormant interest in interactive
netsex.
That didn't happen, but it was fun to play with nonetheless. Basically,
there are two modes in which you can interactively use your cybernetic
consort: in a chat mode with a similarly equipped someone from
the feelthe.net chat rooms, or as an adjunct to a growing library
of erotic stories and videos which are programmed with instructions
to vary the intensity and rate of your vibrator corresponding
to the ebbs and flows of the stories themselves.
For me, the chat was a bust. One of the big problems for me with
cybersex in general has always been finding a partner whose skills
at writing were sufficiently advanced to get me hot and keep me
interested. Poor spelling and 'Net neologisms (like "R U str8?"),
to me, are the cybersexual equivalent of having my mother call
during foreplay. Alas for my cybersex life, I have often been
unable to keep a mental hardon as I negotiated the uneasy seas
of badly-punctuated sex-oriented chat. It wasn't any easier sitting
there with that hard green plastic love Weeble tucked in my panties.
This is not to say that there was any problem with the equipment.
On the contrary. It buzzed and purred as it was supposed to. If
only the humans involved were as reliably satisfactory and as
good at what they were attempting to do. I found myself wishing
that I had a literate long-distance partner with whom to try it
so that I could better evaluate how it might've worked under more
ideal circumstances.
Using the setup with stories likewise left me lukewarm, but for
different reasons. Simply put, when I'm reading smut to get off,
I do not like someone else second-guessing my reactions. The simple
matter of taste in smut aside (I'm a picky bastard when it comes
to what actually gets me off), I still don't like the way it feels
to have some faceless entity assuming it knows when and how to
diddle my clit… it has crummy timing sometimes. They say Hell
hath no fury like a woman scorned, but let me tell you, the fury
of a woman who was just about to get off and had her vibrator
suddenly go to a dramatically different frequency, thus cutting
off that orgasm at the proverbial pass, comes a pretty close second.
But then, there's no way (currently) for the machines concerned
to get biofeedback, to know how I'm reacting to what they're doing,
or to adjust themselves to my reactions. This forms the crux of
my problems with this whole teledildonics experiment: the technology
is quite functional and does what it is advertised to do, but
at the same time, the tech is also only about halfway realized,
which is not so much the fault of the inventors as it is due to
the limitations of what is really technologically feasible right
now as a mass-marketable sex toy product. Ultimately, however,
if teledildonics is to succeed commercially, I think it's going
to have to do a better job of integrating the notoriously difficult-to-replicate
"human element."
That's what really makes a sexual experience exciting (for me
at least), even if it's just masturbation. The infinite variety
of shadings of touch and response, even if it's only your own
touch in response to yourself, and the equally infinite variety
of moods and emotional landscapes in which sex takes place are
what makes great sex great. Digital Sexations' equipment isn't
able to replicate this kind of stuff, but that's only to be expected.
The technology is in its infancy. Right now, it's an amusing diversion
which could be a lot of fun to play with, particularly with a
partner who was a known quantity and whose cybersexual tastes
matched your own. It'll be a while before teledildonics gets to
a level where it's really the stuff my own cybernetic fantasies
are made of. In the meantime, it's nice to know that at least
some enterprising folks out there are working on getting it a
little bit further along the way.
Copyright, Hanne Blank. All Rights Reserved, 2000 |
