The Internet of Sexy Things: The Future of Interconnected Eroticism

The tantalizing fun of devices talking to devices.

Without a second thought, we routinely pick up our smart devices and exchange text, video, audio, software, or whatever else we want with practically anyone, anywhere nearly instantaneously.

Yet, a still bigger technological breakthrough is right around the corner: the time when our smart tech won’t just allow us to communicate with each other, but when our all of our personal technology will share data with each other.

Welcome to the Internet off Thins: a system involving the give-and-take of information surrounding every moment of every day—including our sex lives

And that’s when things will get really interesting.

Hello, I’m your technology

Coined by Kevin Ashton back in 1999, the Internet of Things is best described by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) at the United Nations“as a global infrastructure for the information society, enabling advanced services by interconnecting (physical and virtual) things based on existing and evolving interoperable information and communication technologies.”

At its core, this mouthful is actually a simple concept. Beginning with a simple—and rather silly—example, take the toaster you’ll be owning in just a few years: it has a clock to tell it when breakfast is, temperature sensors so it knows not to burn the sourdough, a way of letting you know when it should be cleaned, and is Bluetooth enabled so it will send you text message letting you know when it’s time to eat.

Your toaster is smart: it can sense, react, and—most of all—talk to you and your other devices.

While it seems like just about every consumer good being made and sold today is somehow smart, the big breakthrough has yet to really arrive. Ironically, the main hindrance is one of communication: that many of our new intelligence things just don’t have the same lingua franca.

Speaking to FastCompany, Tom Kerber, a Parks Associates analyst, said of this communication babel issue is caused by so many different devices using different languages.

“Right now, the fact that they’re fighting each other…they’re splitting the apple,” he said.

There are signs, though, that a linguistic commonality might be on the way. Several tech giants, including Microsoft, have become part of the Open Connectivity Foundation: a group seeking that so-far elusive universal device tongue.

Talking the language of sex

Meanwhile, smart technology continues to thrive—even if they all can’t speak communicate with each other yet. One of the most popular of these devices is the wearables product, specifically tech like the Apple Watch and the Fitbit.

Able to monitor motion and in some cases heartbeat, they record and monitor how action has been done—or still needs to be done—to meet pre-programmed parameters. And, being smart, they then can transmit this data via Bluetooth to smartphones or tablets and from there to doctors and physical trainers via the Internet.

And now we get to sex. Taking advantage of these innovations, many sex toy manufacturers have also incorporated smart tech into their products. We’ve already heard of the Indiegogo-funded REMOJI that hopes to improve the user’s sex life by connecting a special app with a smart sex toy.

The Elvie follows this sexual health route by having a special bit of hardware mated to a special app to help women develop their kegel muscles.

Then, of course, there’s Kiiroo that shows signs of being a teledildonic breakthrough by linking devices via the Internet and allowing feedback between components.

There are many others—such as OhMiBod’s blueMotion, for example—but Lovense upped the Internet of Things ante with its Indiegogo campaign for an app that would allow users to remotely control one of its sex toy products via an Apple Watch.

For all these developments, we’re still a few years away from seeing the true potential of a totally interconnected health and sexuality system.

That doesn’t mean we can’t do some playful imagining of what that kind of world might be like.

How may I turn you on today?

Back to irony, the biggest change is going to be the least noticeable. Right now we have scattered little pieces of smart tech that kind of, sort of talk and interact with us and their fellow devices. Yes, part of getting past this is a more uniform language base, but an equally big part will be a way of maintaining that link between them all.

That means that there’s still that mood-killer, sexually or otherwise, of trying to get that connection going—and keep it up (sorry). But, as with finding that common tongue, more than likely before any of us know it, we’ll have all of our devices chatting happily, and most of all, smoothly and with a great sense of stability.

Now we can really get smart

It may not be all that sexy but a key part of having a great sex life is health—and here’s where interconnected tech really comes into play. By monitoring your heart rate, blood pressure, diet, and exercise via wearables like the Fitbit and Apple Watch, or even through implantable sensors, your personal network would be able to keep an eye on not just if you are ready for sex but the best kind of sex for you to have.

Additionally, all your tech could keep track of your performance and t and monitor any difficulties you might have—and, in the case of things really going wrong, could even contact your doctor or emergency services.

Problems having a satisfying orgasm or dealing with issues of arousal? You might not realize it has to do with, say, your glucose levels, but your refrigerator knows what you’ve been eating, your wearable knows what your body is up to, and maybe even your bed will be able to add its two cents to the discussion.

Tweaking the performance of a sex toy can sometimes be far from arousing, but when your wearable or even implant can keep a digital eye on how you’re progressing, it can do the fine-tuning all itself. Just literally plug and play (sorry again).

Want to play with a bit of BDSM? With a sexual Internet of Things, you would be able to know—with the permission of all parties concerned, of course—what your partner or partners are up to and when you could playfully interfere or even ramp things up to 11. Then there’s the safety factor: knowing what exactly someone can take, erotically or physically, will be able to add a whole new dimension to the bedroom—or dungeon.

Then there’s tying all this to everything else. Maybe having the room cooler will result in a more powerful orgasm and, bingo, as your arousal rises your sex toy tells your house and the air conditioning clicks on. What if you like a good snack afterwards? Then that same toy could tell your kitchen and your smart toaster, who hates to be left out, to start work on a nice bagel.

As you get closer the music comes on: just the right tuneage to push you over the edge. Maybe your partner is not as close as you are? Chatting with their personal tech, the whole system balances and tweaks everything from temperature to sex toy vibrations, and then acts to get you both in sync.

We could go on like this but the point is pretty well made: with the coming sexual Internet of Things we’ll not just be surrounded by smart technology. We’ll also be able to experience erotic play with perfect control,both personally as well through the invisible actions of dozens, or maybe even hundreds, or separate devices all talking to us and each other.

Keep it to yourself, toaster

The making of private things public, either by accent or intrusion, is one of the largest reasons many people stay offline. As we fast approach a true Internet of Things, this concern is going to be magnified tremendously. It’s one thing to be worried about personally sharing too much on Facebook and quite another when your toaster can automatically reveal how you like your muffins done to the entire world.

One reason to stay optimistic about security is the idea of biometrics: that your toaster—to pick on the poor fellow just one more time—knows it’s you and not someone else. It will know you better than anyone else and, after chatting with your phone and your fridge and even your sex toys, it will recognize you and keep its bread-warming trap shut.

We’re all together

Soon—very, very soon by all accounts—we and all of our personal devices will be connected in ways that we can barely imagine. This will lead to new and powerful ways to not just have fun but also understand our lives and bodies.

We are in the Age of Information-—and knowing is always better than not knowing, especially when it comes to sex.

Image source: Perspecsys Photos, FW: Thinking