Twitterdildonics: The Video

Look ma, I'm on GETV!

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While at SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas, Roving RoboReporter Violet Blue caught up with a unique hacker by the name of Kyle Machulis. Kyle isn't your ordinary teledildonic hardware hacker. No, Kyle created the ultimate real-time sex device mashup by linking public Twitter updates to a Rez Trance Vibrator allowing users to FEEL Twitter messages. Kyle demonstrates and explains how it all works to Violet. You will never regard Twitter the same way again. (This video is safe for work, no matter what your industry).

Episode links: Violet Blue, qDot (slashdong), MMOrgy, IGDA Sex, Twitter, Rez Trance Vibrator

You know, I've heard myself on podcasts multiple times since I started Slashdong, but I'm pretty sure this is the first video I've done. I'm totally having that whole "hear your own voice recorded for the first time" reaction...

So, there it is, the underground hit of SXSW, Twitterdildonics. I still plan on overhauling a few things with it and possibly making some different interfaces (Morse Code and Motor Based Phoneme Projection were both recommended), but even so, nothing beats the original.

Remember, if you're interested in using Twitterdildonics, it hooks up perfectly with the Drmn' Trance Vibe, the open source sex toy!

At GDC Expo, I happened upon the Silicon Studios booth, where they were showing off Motion Portrait, a new piece of face mapping/morphing software that... well, it hacks the uncanny valley into tiny, bloody chunks.

Here's a decent video of it so you can get an idea of what's going on:

And then here's my face mapped into it, as taken by my cellphone:

Now, all they had to do was take an expressionless picture of me in order to get the facial manipulation to work. Since I'm posting this on a tech sex site, right after a post on transhumanist ethics in sex, the discussions of the horrid misuse of this technology is left as an exercise for the reader and/or reblogger.

From Virtual Sex to No Sex?

Just found an article from the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies by Dr. James Hughes (a transhumanist ethicist who has a whole bunch of cool articles, check that link for them) about the neuroethics of virtual sex. Much of the beginning of the article actually references some of my writing here on slashdong, and I found it through my referrers. I was all giddy that someone had written me up in IEEE somewhere then realized that was a T not an E and got all pouty, but continued reading anyways.

And now I wanna go curl up in a corner and rock back and forth while crying for a while, I think.

But the equipment has been so crude that it has not provided a very interesting experience for many. In about ten years however I’m sure that Wii-sex will be quite popular.

Agreed. Equipment totally sucks. (I'm not kidding here. I'm never one to defend our current teledildonics technology, nor am I saying I'm doing much to advance it. I just make the easy stuff and hook it up to the silly stuff). However, I'll ask again... Why does everyone love the Wii-sex idea so much?

Eventually we will be able to directly stimulate the parts of the brain that desire specific partners or experiences. In the future we will be able to specifically turn off sexual thoughts about children, and turn on appropriate sexual thoughts about adults. We will be able to make gays straight, and straights gay, and everything in between. There will be no more necessity for sexual boredom between long term partners. We will be able to wire ourselves to only desire sex with our spouses, to only desire it in-body, and to desire it according to an agreed upon frequency. Or we can turn off our jealousy, and turn up our libidos, if we have agreed to a polyamorous lifestyle.

... Man, what the fuck are we gonna do for sitcoms on TV when this happens?

In all seriousness though, there'd have been a time when I would've knocked this whole article off as fucking nonsense (possibly earlier this morning even, before I took all the cold medicine I'm on right now). However, 2 years down the road, spending all my time working on or in virtual worlds and watching how people are innovating in sex tech, all I can do is stand by the side of the road, crack open a beer, and say "Yup."

MariaScript - The Interactive Sex Language

Someone (who's managed to keep their contact information pretty well hidden) has come up with a language specification (but I don't believe a parser is yet available) for having sex with an android. I don't think we're gonna be seeing this language on Lambda The Ultimate any time soon.

Honestly, I'm not sure why this /needs/ its own language, but I guess I can applaud the effort nonetheless. Or at least give it that weird, tilted head, "Huh?" kinda look. Doesn't look like there's any implementation or examples available as of yet, but lord knows I've built things for no reason before...

Since there's a good chance we'll kill the tripod bandwidth limit for this site, I've mirrored the two PDFs onto here to make sure they're available.

• Maria Language Background Information - PDF, ~500k
• Maria Language Specification - PDF, ~400k

The creator of the language also runs XXXToyTech, a site about building sex interfaces that predates Slashdong by a good 2-3 years if not more. I'm trying to mirror down the site right now as breathing on it trips the bandwidth alarms, but what I've gotten so far is kinda fun...

• Female Sexual Mechanics for Android Makers - PDF, ~3mb
• Male Sexual Mechanics for Android Makers - PDF, ~900k

I so, so want a shirt with this graph on it.

So during my trip to LA (which I still need to write up), the guys from Nue were nice enough to meet up with me, tell me about their product, then give me a 24 pack. These things have been nothing but fun ever since. I took a few to GDC and handed them out at the Sex in Games Roundtable, then took a big ol' batch to SXSW, threw them out during The Sex and Computational Technology panel, and handed some out at the parties I went to. Well, one thing led to another, and sure enough, a grainy, dark video of Ze Frank giving one a quick test poke has hit the internet.

And here's Philip Torrone with one! All of the Internet Celebs are being seen with Nue!

Thanks again to the people from Nue USA for making this possible. I'll be writing more about their product and others in our upcoming FuckTube Roundup Videocast.

via Second Life Insider