The Strange Future of Cyber Sex Toys

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Years ago, I was a crash test dummy for sex toys. I'd field-test and review pleasure gadgets for books and zines. One of these toys was an Accu-Jack, a male masturbation device similar to Austin Powers' Swedish penis pump. I was sent a tarted-up pneumatic version and gave it the thumbs down it deserved—it sounded like a jackhammer and could suck the rivets out of the space shuttle. After that, I didn't see an Accu-Jack outside of the occasional campy porn flick, but I knew this classic gizmo was out there somewhere. Imagine my surprise when I found it reincarnated as a cutting-edge cybersex device.

This new rendering, with the charming moniker RoboSuck, is more Buck Rogers than Austin Powers—a battery-powered rubber air bladder nestled inside a sleek Lucite tube. The biggest difference, though, is that now you can share it with others by jacking it into the World Wide Web. You're not just having a private fantasy, you're having real cybersex. As in virtual presence. As in the-sex-toy-is-pumping-but-no-one-is-touching-it.

The technology is ingenious. A small window, the RoboSuck controller, pops up on your monitor. Your cyberpartner has a similar window open. By moving the mouse, your partner sends a signal to the window on your screen. A sensor on the RoboSuck that suction-cups to your monitor reads the data in the control window. Voila! The digital jack-off.

Known as cyberdildonics, this naughty new contender for killer online app comes to us courtesy of SafeSexPlus.com, a Web site that boasts the slogan the internet never felt so good. Part carny hustle and part genuine technosocial breakthrough, this site peddles an arsenal of Web-modified sex toys: vibrating rubber mouths and vaginas, anal toys, fantastically shaped vibrators. Developed by techies at Web-Power, the parent company that also operates adult Web sites, the gadgets cost about the same as those found in big-city sex shops. Combined with a $25 converter that reads the stroke data off your screen, they enable you to have real-time sex with anyone on the planet who also downloads the free software.

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