A fundamental question arising in the digital age, concerns what is a real experience. Watching videos of humans interacting with sex dolls and robots, or engaging in other techno-sexual experiences, we observe genuine emotions and feelings being expressed.

Hideo Tsuchiya, president of Orient IndustryHumans behave tenderly towards their sex toy companions, perhaps expressing aspects of their personalities not revealed in human interactions. For others, these extravagant sex toys are nothing more than the ultimate masturbatory experience.

Often these sex toys, especially dolls, are idealized fantasy creatures. The Japanese company Orient Industry creates dolls that are near-perfect replicas of young Japanese women.

Hideo Tsuchiya, the president of Orient Industry, says the doll is not merely a sex object. She can also be an “irreplaceable lover” who can provide emotional healing. If you can’t find a real lover (or you don’t want one), the dolls are wonderful substitutes.

“Nowadays, women are sometimes more dominant than men in the real world, and they don’t always pay attention to men,” said Hideo Tsuchiya, president of sex doll manufacturer Orient Industry. “More and more men are finding themselves miserable so we’re making these dolls partly in support of men.”

Anne and Julian

Enough! My inquisitive mind is intrigued! Although the offering of male sex dolls for women is pathetic, I’ve found a guy I can live with. For $159.95 I can experience Julian Rock Hard Doll, designed exclusively for the INDEPENDENT WOMAN! I assure you that I am not causing men to turn to doll substitutes. Never.

It’s a sad fact that my lover is away, far more than he’s in New York. The weak dollar is killing our relationship, forcing him to spend increasingly more time in Europe. Hmmm, I wonder if he will be jealous, or just laugh at one more of my crazy antics.

My new playmate comes fully-loaded. “Incredibly life-like doll has a gorgeous mannequin head, gazing brown eyes, flowing hair, soft kissable lips and a succulently erotic rotating and vibrating deep penetrating tongue. Julian is Better-Than-Real with a life-like rotating dong and exquisitely soft vibrating balls with a muscular physique and a firm, tight ass. Powered by the easy dial, super-powerful multi-speed BP-100TM Power Paks. Requires 4 AA batteries.”

Apparently, Julian doesn’t speak, but one day soon, he will whisper hot, lusty, honey- love messages in my ear.

Meet the Honey Dolls

This lifelike, silicon-made Honey Dollis equipped with touch sensors, causing her to moan with different sounds. Scroll to the full image gallery and click on the Japanese writing video to hear Honey experiencing orgasmic bliss.

Lifelike, silicon-made Honey Dolls

Certain touches activate her sensors, and the doll will moan with different sounds. You can use the manufacturer’s default moans, or you can design them yourselves. Presumably, your Honey Doll can call out your name when she climaxes, tell you to thrust harder, and generally stoke your male (or female) ego into overdrive.

Honey Dolls are especially adept at oral sex, and I remain confused as to whether or not one can just buy a head. Sorry, but I find a head-only option a bit unsettling.

If a woman is very open-minded, she might even encourage her man to enjoy oral sex with a Honey Doll sex head in her absence. He can cam the event, while she’s soaking in a granite bath tub in Hong Kong’s Regent Hotel, her laptop propped safely for her voyeuristic viewing.

Teledildonics and The Real Deal

Teledildonics are electronic sex toys that can be controlled by a computer. Much new technology wires up devices originally created for a masturbatory experience, making them interactive for couples.

We begin with the basics.

The Fleshlight markets itself as the #1 male sex toy in the world. This masturbation sleeve now comes with asorted vaginas modeled after “the hottest girls on the Internet”.

I haven’t read that the Fleshlight has been wired, but it seems a prime candidate for Regina Lynn’s sexy vision of our evolving global eroticism: “I see this type of product catching on with long-distance lovers and cyberlovers, too. All you need to do is invent a rack to hold it, so you can keep both hands free, and then add Skype, Second Life or your connectivity of choice.”

365 Cyber Sexy

These new toys are redefining the ways that couples make love in cyberspace.

Gizmodo reports: “The KissPhone detects percussion speed, pressure, temperature, and sucking force of the lips, when you kiss it. An artificial mouth on the phone can reproduces same parameters to the kissphone receptor.”

Unlike HighJoy (NSFW) and Sinulator (NSFW), which connect two people’s sex toys in real time over the internet, the Segment system combines video and tactile input into a single file that your fans — or your lovers — can play back at their leisure.

The Segment uses an input device and an output device. The input device is used with a webcam and camcorder. When the input device is touched or stroked, the pressure of each touch becomes an embedded signal.

The signal is then transmitted to the output device. Person A touches and stimulates the input device; Person B “receives” the sensations via the output device.

The Segment system is being marketed to webcam actresses and porn stars, as a system that provides a form of simulated sex. Consider it to be two degrees of separation from your favorite porn star.

Conclusion:

Sex with manufactured lovers, virtual sex with porn stars, sex with robots - is this the landscape of our future? In Steven Spielberg’s movie “A.I.,” Jude Law played Gigolo Joe, a robotic love machine that fulfilled the needs of lonely women. There was a touch sadness to Joe’s character, and Spielberg’s vision of the future was bleak.

The market for sexual experience products is growing exponentially. People are lonely, busy, stressed and weary of pursuing and maintaining regular relationships. Virtual reality games and cybersex are redefining our emotional and sensual experiences, as we surprise ourselves with our real, human responses to artificial situations.

The quality of a cybersex encounter typically depends upon the participants’ abilities to evoke a vivid, visceral mental picture in the minds of their partners. Imagination and suspension of disbelief are also critically important.

When we let our imaginations roam freely, when we imbue devices — animate or not — with human qualities, a range of very real responses occur. They are emotional, as well as physical.

Watching so many videos, my co-writer Kis Lee and I are struck most of all, by the very humanlike connectivity, and simulated expriences that exist between us humans and our 21st century sex toys. This poignant, explicit video with a cheap sex doll talks to us.

To me, our erotic future appears inevitable. And perhaps joyful and deliciously satisfying. There is something to be said for a sex partner who’s always happy to see you, and always ready to do his or her best, to insure your ultimate sexual pleasure.

Hmmm. I’ll report back to you on Julian. Anne