The Strange Future of Cyber Sex Toys

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"Who would have thought that the computer mouse would become the most powerful sex toy ever invented?" asks Dominic Sardone, SafeSexPlus' senior vice president of marketing. Actually, lots of people. According to Howard Rheingold's 1991 book, Virtual Reality, the word dildonics goes back to 1974, when Ted Nelson, the inventor of hypertext, used it to describe a "device capable of converting sound into tactile sensations."

The hype, however, didn't begin until the early '90s, when virtual reality was going to Change Everything. Like every other shiny new technobauble, VR promised us mind-blowing sex. Sci-fi sex. But not even the ambitious folks at SafeSexPlus have cracked that barrier. Even when supplemented with those golf-ball cameras that allow lovers to watch each other, the RoboSuck experience is Bronze Age crude. There is something ghostly, even ridiculous, about today's cyberdildonic sex--a clumsy little machine, simple and repetitive, untouched by human hands.

It's 100 percent safe. You'll never catch a sexually transmitted disease, proclaims SafeSexPlus. But this is not an enterprise run on safe-sex altruism. It's like a strip-club tout: Once you show interest—in this case, through software and gear—they'll try to lure you into their lair. Which is where the iFriends Network comes in.

Sold as a kind of cyberspace Plato's Retreat where randy technoids lurk, iFriends is more of an electronic flea market where, at last count, 15,000 Webcam-equipped entrepreneurs/ exhibitionists attempt to sell virtual sex. You can chat online and review still images for free, but anything more--including a cyberdildonics session—costs money, usually around two bucks a minute. What makes iFriends different from other sex sites and chat rooms is that here you can get the real thing. Not only can you talk online to nude partners and watch them via streaming video, you also can ask them to get you off, from anywhere in the world. The global network has registered almost 2 million visitors.

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