Wednesday, December 13, 2006

But Who Will Love the Lovebots?


filed under: Design for Sex, Love & Other Glitches by Melissa Gira | 1 Comment

Jamais Cascio, founder of WorldChanging, writing at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies on emotional companionship and the probability of lovebots over sexbots:

The notion of human-looking robots made for love has a long history, but—perhaps unsurprisingly—by far the dominant emphasis has been on erotic love. And while it’s true that many emerging technologies get their first serious use in the world of sexual entertainment, it’s by no means clear that there’s a real market for realistic interactive sex dolls. The social norms around sex, and the biological and social need for bonding beyond physical play, may well relegate realistic sex dolls to the tasks of therapy and of assistance for those who, for whatever reason, are unable to ever find a partner.

But that doesn’t mean we won’t see love dolls. Instead of sex-bots driving the industry, emotional companions for the aged and depressed may end up being the leading edge of the field of personal robotics. These would not be care-givers in the robot nurse sense; instead, they’d serve as recipients of care provided by the human partner, as it is increasingly clear that the tasks of taking care of someone else can be a way out of the depths of depression.

real doll love

As actual human beings hired for supposedly purely sexual comfort often find themselves in the role of nursemaid and mommy and therapist, this isn’t too shocking. However, the idea that a supposedly just-for-sexbot may serve not as a service provider, but as an object to be cared for, nursed, adored, and otherwise serve as a receptacle for our fears of loneliness and helplessness is, though sad, damn believable. Through looking at this behavior kink through the lens of human/robot interaction, it reveals the shadow side of human/human caretaking, that even when we may see ourselves as catering to the needs of another (sexually, emotionally, all of the above), perhaps we’re just looking for that to be cared for within ourselves.

Question is, who, then, to comfort those robots?

(Image: emo-star-tattoo-bot reaches out to french-nail-bot… actually, they both have French manicures… as seen on the Real Doll Doctor fetish site)

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