Virtual Bondage, AI power exchange, digital fetishes, and beyond!

While the initials that form the term BDSM are easy to define—Bondage and Discipline/Dominance, and Submission/Sadism and Masochism—the actual concept itself is so incredibly diverse. It covers so many sexual interests that even Wikipedia says that “inclusion in the BDSM community or subculture is usually dependent on self-identification and shared experience.”

In short, if you feel kinky you can be part of the BDSM lifestyle.

At its core, however, BDSM is generally about sexual control: one party relinquishing it, another other assuming it. The roles commonly involved are often referred to as top and bottom—with a switch being those who find pleasure in flipping between the two.

As BDSM can sometimes involve some emotional as well as physical extremes, the BDSM community strives to self-monitor. One of the most common forms of this is the idea that BDSM experiences (or “scenes”) should always strive to be safe (“attempts should be made to identify and prevent risks to health”); sane (“activities should be undertaken in a sane and sensible frame of mind”); and, very importantly, consensual (“all activities should involve the full consent of all parties involved”—using Wikipedia again).

Though the idea of BDSM is traced by some to the works of the Marquis de Sade and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, as well as luminaries like Sigmund Freud, the concept of using the exchange of sexual power for the pleasure of those concerned is clearly deeply rooted in the human psyche.

BDSM, though, has evolved and become much more refined and responsible since those early explorers. Today, a great number of people embrace BDSM not just as an enjoyable activity but as a special, and extremely powerful, form of sexual expression and personal identity. For them, BDSM is not just play but a way of life and even spirituality.

Tying kinksters together

While there is a clear fondness for the aesthetics of the past—play spaces often being fondly called dungeons)—BDSM, like practically every other form of human sexuality, has dramatically benefited from recent technological changes.

For many years the only way anyone could discover the BDSM community was through very specific magazines and underground guidebooks. With the advent of the Internet, though, the power exchange community exploded.

Now there are many BDSM specific dating apps and innumerable sites—one of the most popular being Fetlife—giving people even in the remotest parts of the world an opportunity to connect with, and receive support from, other BDSM community members.

Even more importantly, this new level of interconnectivity means that people interested in the lifestyle can share essential information on how to do BDSM play safely.

Kinky hardware

While still in the early stages of development, another technological breakthrough that could also expand BDSM play potential are recent developments in teledildonics: sex toys linked to each other as well as the Internet.

We’ve seen many new devices become available—such as those from OhMiBod, Lovense, and KIIROO—that are allowing lovers to reach out and virtually touch one another. More than likely this same technology will be embraced by the BDSM community to add an extra dimension to kinky play.

After all, a major component to many people in the BDSM scene is the idea of sexual control—and how better to reward a submissive than by a teledildonic orgasm? Or, if they haven’t deserved such pleasure, why not then deny them access to their favorite sex toy via a biometric password held by their dominant?

VR dungeons

Virtual reality, too, shows great promise in bringing new toys to the BDSM playbag. Many adult entertainment companies have included VR options for their kink customers. One of the, if not the, largest BDSM pornography companies, Kink.com, has already launched a virtual reality version of its popular site [NSFW].

Other companies, like Pornhub, also feature a fetish section of their VR offerings—with many others no doubt arriving soon.

While VR’s power of total immersion lends itself perfectly to sex, it really could be a massive benefit to those interested in BDSM.

For all of today’s growing acceptance of different forms of sexuality, the world of domination and submission, and all the flavors it may involve, is still seen by many to be taboo—both because of personal shame as well as the backward attitudes of far too many healthcare professionals and legislators.

Because of this, VR holds tremendous promise in exposing—and educating—the BDSM curious to the reality of the lifestyle. Reading about a technique is one thing, and a video is another, but VR and its power to place people virtually in the experience, would be the next best thing to a hands-on experience.

Fetishizing Tomorrow

In the meantime, we are fast approaching a time when sexual control of one person by another (consensually, of course) could literally be a hardwired option.

Direct neurostimulation is the implantation of electrodes in a person’s body or brain allowing them, or someone else, to directly trigger an orgasm without genital contact.

It doesn’t take a huge amount of (kinky) imagination to see where this could lead. Dominants could literally have the keys to their submissive’s pleasure, or be able to reward them at any time, any place, with a simple electronic signal.

Additionally, neurostimulation could mean a whole new orchestra of erotic sensations. With digital rewiring of signals, it could be possible for someone to receive unique forms of erotic stimulation from apparently non-erotic behaviors. A submissive, for example, who performs an expected action—say doing the dishes—could receive the reward of an erotic thrill for doing it perfectly.

Then you have bondage. Even though things like rope, leather, and latex restraints will more than likely never go out of style, with direct access to a person’s motor centers it would be possible to restrain someone totally and completely within their own body—with the consent of those involved, of course.

Meanwhile, as advances in artificial intelligence grow, it also could be possible in the future to have a manufactured dominant or submissive: one that would be programmed not just for the greatest pleasure but also for physical and emotional safety.

Right along with safety, sanity, and consensuality, another thing the BDSM community embraces is imagination. And with these new technological playthings, both here now and coming soon, the world of kinky sexual play could become even more powerful—and beautiful.

What arousing dreams may come

And yet the greatest—if all goes well—is yet to come.

While lagging slightly behind gay and transgender rights, and polyamorous relationships, BDSM continues to gain acceptance.

Though there may be trials and tribulations ahead, it is clear that one day being a member of the BDSM community, having power exchange-based sexuality, will not be a cause for social stigma.

In this future world, sex in all its consensual forms will be seen as a wonderful way to celebrate the pleasure of being human—and never with shame or fear.

Image sources: Depositphotos

The post A Great Big Kinky Tomorrow: What BDSM Might Be Like in Years Ahead appeared first on Future of Sex.

Learning who we are and what we want may be as easy as going to sleep

Often so deeply rooted in our depths of brains that the most self-aware, disciplined minds still can’t easily comprehend them. Scientists employing large AI language models to interpret data collected by non-invasive magnetic resonance imaging scanners may soon be able to explore those unknowabledomains and perhaps potentially alter them as well.

See you in my dreams

As reported by Vox, in 2023, University of Austin researchers used an fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) machine to monitor their test subjects while listening to a fifteen-plus hour-long podcast.  

The data was subsequently collated by a specialty-programmed AI algorithm which linked spikes in neurological activity to the test subjects hearing different certain phrases, giving the team a type of mental vocabulary; this pattern meant they were likely thinking about that, in effect allowing the researchers to understand what their subjects were thinking.

Though lacking in specifics, as in identifying more generalized concepts, less exact words the Austin team was nevertheless concerned their technology could be put toward less-than-ethical uses, writing, “Future developments might enable decoders to bypass these requirements.  Moreover, even if decoder predictions are inaccurate without subject cooperation, they could be intentionally misinterpreted for malicious purposes.”

Sweet dreams are made of this

Later that same year, Professor Yukiyasu Kamitani from Kyoto’s TR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories announced they’d found a way to not just decipher a person’s thoughts but actually visualize their dreams.

Speaking to the BBC, Professor Kamitani explained, “I had a strong belief that dream decoding should be possible at least for particular aspects of dreaming.”  Adding that, “I was not very surprised by the results, but excited.”

RECOMMENDED READ: Goodbye Virtual, Hello Reality: Multisensory Systems May Bring Our Wildest Fantasies to Life

While the Austin researchers tried to read the conscious mind, Professor Kamitani’s team used a similar fMRI scan and AI combo before waking their subjects from early REM sleep and having them describe as much of their dreams as they possibly could.  

A second round of scans took place while the subjects were awake. They were shown a variety of images, which enabled the researchers to assemble their own dream-interpretive vocabulary.

University of Oxford cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Mark Stokes pointed out Professor Kamitani’s lexicon as above couldn’t be generalized, “You would never be able to build a general classifier that could read anybody’s dreams. They will all be idiosyncratic to the individual, so the brain activity will never be general across subjects.” 

Runnin’ Down a Dream

Even so, imagine if fMRI technology was portable and affordable—coupled with a few more years of fine-tuning—peering into our uniquely primordial selves might provide us with invaluable insights like revealing and possibly helping us to emotionally process unconsciously suppressed sexual urges.

Imagine the therapeutic possibilities, a world where our dreams wouldn’t be half-remembered, barely understood, and frequently misinterpreted but sharp, clear, and amazingly vivid: laid out for us to learn and grow from, with the aid of a new breed of sexual wellness experts.

Why knows, maybe we’ll see the rise of artists who use not film, cameras, paints, or canvas but their own highly-trained subconscious minds to create fantastically alluring, erotically dreamy VR entertainments—or feel as well as see, by throwing next-gen haptic tech into the mix as well.

Dream weaver

But what about when our nocturnal voyages twist, turn, or darken into nightmares?  Thankfully, the geniuses over at MIT Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces are way ahead of you, having developed an innovative technique for reshaping a person’s otherwise unpleasant dreams.

According to Live Science, it begins during hypnagogia, an early, semi-lucid dream state, where MIT discovered their Targeted Dream Incubation (TDI) can be used to implant any number of positive suggestions to positively alter the course of their test subjects’ dreams.

“Simply put, people tell us whether the prompts appear in their dream,” the group’s lead author said, “Often, they are transformed—a ‘tree’ prompt becomes a tree-shaped car—but direct incorporation is easily identified.”

Again, the psychologically beneficial aspects of Targeted Dream Incubation (TDI)—partially in regard to coping with sexual trauma are potentially limitlesas. 

As is adding it, perhaps as part of a portable fMRI rig that, alerted to the wearer’s hypnagogic state, would automatically feed them a series of sexual-fantasy enhancing prompts?

In any case, as these and other burgeoning dream-related technologies demonstrate, as Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

Image Sources: Depositphotos

The post Dream a Little Dream: How Brain-Reading Tech Will Unlock Our Innermost Desires appeared first on Future of Sex.

Part three of The Ten Greatest Sexual Innovations to Come

Our first series on future sex technologies took a gander at developments in sensory tech: virtual reality, augmented reality, and direct neurostimulation. Then we journeyed into a future erotic world of cyborgs, body switching, and genetic engineering.

We’ve looked at what changes may come to our senses, including the changes to how we’ll experience eroticism. Then we explored the possible coming changes to our physical selves: how we’ll interact with the world.

So what’s left?

As that old chestnut goes, the greatest sex organ in the human body is the brain—and the future promises incredible changes to that very special part of ourselves. Hang on for a ride into the future of our erotic mental landscape with an exploration into neurochemistry, memory manipulation, personality reproduction, and artificial intelligence.

Innovation 7: Neurochemistry

Human beings have been altering our consciousnesses since… well, we’ve been human.

Since their discovery, MDMA (i.e. ecstasy), THC (the active ingredient in cannabis), and not to forget good old alcohol—and well as other substances—have practically become staples of human sexuality. And let’s not forget the physiological enhancements like Viagra.

But even more innovations are right around the corner. Soon, we will be able to (and, yes, I am going to use that overused word here) literally change our minds. After all, once we have unlocked the keys to chemical consciousness there’ll be nothing we won’t be able to amplify, tweak, or even remove.

Agreed, the possibility of abuse is there. But then we’ve always faced that in every technological innovation, sexual or otherwise, from rubbing two sticks together to the Internet.

But let’s look on the bright side. In a few years we’ll be able to pop a wizardly pharmaceutical mixture and become whatever we erotically want to be. Have a low sex drive? Then ramp it up. Sexually distracted? Shunt that sexual energy in other directions. Climax too fast? Slow it down. Climax too slowly? Speed it up.

Want to feel what it’s like to be on the other side of the orientation fence? One swallow and you can be gay, straight, bi … the idea of being just how you were born will be a thing of the past.

We already have some very effective anti-anxiety, anti-depression, anti-just-about-anything meds, so why not a drug to alleviate homophobia, shame, guilt, or jealousy?

But sometimes a pill just won’t do it. Just as our minds are within our brains, our personalities are often the products of our memories.

And here’s where things get really interesting.

Innovation 8: Memory Manipulation

While it’s sadly become a nightmare cliché, the promise of being able to alter or edit human memory actually holds incredible promise in treating a wide range of sexual dysfunctions.

We are, for the most part, our pasts. Errors in judgment become repeating patterns, early erotic imprinting carry on into adulthood, and sexual phobias form from traumatic experiences. Therapy can sometimes help, but for many their present lives are forever eclipsed by painful histories.

Either chemically or via direct neurostimulation, we’ll shortly be able to diminish these crippling memories or change them completely. Perhaps they’ll remain but will be toned down to a dull roar, or perhaps they’ll be walled off—to be revisited and hopefully addressed during therapy.

RECOMMENDED READ: Fans of the Future: Envisioning Tomorrow’s Sexual Subcultures

But there’s more: once we have access to the human mind there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to share memories of actual experiences or even artificially created ones. Maybe we’ll experience wild erotic adventures that’ll be fed directly into our minds, or learn how to be better lovers by having mental “hands on” training; feel what our lovers feel … to become part of their very own minds.

Or perhaps we’ll find the perfect sexual partner—in ourselves.

Innovation 9: Personality Reproduction

Agreed, we are wandering a bit toward the far horizon here, but the idea is simple enough: once we digitize human consciousness there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to copy our own personalities, our own minds.

We’ve already imagined a world of shared memories. Want to become be an adult movie star? Download one’s memories.  Want to feel what it’s like to be any orientation, gender, or race? Plug in and there you go.

So why not make a backup copy of yourself? The obvious reason is a form of near immortality. Body gets messed up? Just download yourself into a new one: either a clone of the original or a synthetic one.

But we’re here about sex, after all. So create a backup of your mind, give it either your own memories, or those of someone else and perhaps, maybe, there will be partner of your dreams.

Or take this copy of yourself and send it out to have mind-bending erotic adventures, or travel the universe, or become a different orientation or gender. Then, when they return, just make a copy of their memories and add them to your own. Or perhaps merge both memories into one brand new personality?

But there’s one last stop before we wrap up this Ten Greatest Sexual Innovations to Come voyage—and it’s probably going to be the greatest coming change to human sexuality.

Ever.

Innovation 10: Artificial Intelligence

We’ve read the books, seen the movies, watched the TV shows: the big, bad androids are coming and they are going to wipe out us poor little human beings.

Stephen Hawking has even said that artificial intelligence (AI) “—could spell the end of the human race.”

Besides, many people have hypothesized that AI is not just inevitable but logical; that one day we’ll pass the baton along to our artificial children.While having nowhere near the credentials of Dr. Hawking, I’ve often thought that when we are able to create an artificial mind—that will either come close, or surpass, our own—how we treat it will have a lot to do with how it will treat us.

What has all this to do with sex? Well, let’s let our fantasies rip.

It’s often said that the perfect lover is one that pleases the mind as well as the body: a person who transforms, educates, who helps reveals our deep, true natures. It’s a lucky human being who has someone like that in their life.

Why not extend that opportunity to everyone? An artificial intelligence, programmed with our best interests in mind, could know us better than we know ourselves. Either downloaded into an artificial body or experienced via direct neurostimulation, we could have a sexual partner who would see us with perfect clarity—without having to also deal with their own sexual issues at the same time.

Imagine a sexual partner that not just provides pleasure, but could also help us with every other aspect of our lives, nudging us, guiding us, being there when no one else was. With AI we could create not just a new source of erotic delight, but an important step in human evolution.

It’ll be a great big sexy tomorrow

Okay. Take a deep breath. In and out. Yes, it’s a lot to absorb. But keep in mind how much has changed in only the last few years, and how well we’ve managed to adapt to it all. Reading this on a computer or perhaps a smartphone or tablet, you are one click away from your own personal exploration of everything we’ve touched on.

If you like, there is practically an infinite erotic world to explore in a few more swipes, where every interest, orientation, gender, type–real or imaginary–is available to explore.

Yes, some of what’s been brought up here might be, at first, a little scary, but if we approach the future with excitement—and arousal—who knows what amazing new pleasures await us?

One thing is certain: our only limits will be our imaginations.

Image sources: Depositphotos

The post Reading Our Own Minds: Neurochemistry, Memory Manipulation, Personality Reproduction and AI appeared first on Future of Sex.

Part two of The Ten Great Sexual Innovations Yet To Come

In our first installment on future sex technologies, we took a look at upcoming developments in sensory tech: virtual reality, augmented reality, and direct neurostimulation.

But this time around we’re going to explore what may very well happen to the flesh and blood of humanity—and in fact how sex will no longer be just flesh and blood—by examining three promising innovations in sexual biotechnology: cybernetics, body switching, and genetic engineering.

Innovation Four: Cybernetics

Sure, Nathan S. Kline and Manfred Clynes may have coined the term cyborg in 1960, but the concept of enhancing humanity through artificial limbs and organs is actually an ancient one.

Through recent developments in direct nerve connections, exotic materials, and microscopic sensors, we are looking at a time in the not-too-distant future where we won’t just be able to replace missing or diseased organs with artificial ones—but may very well prefer them over the “real thing.”

This is especially true around our sex organs. Just look at how breast implants—in a way a form of artificial augmentation—have changed human eroticism. Right now, breast implants are mostly cosmetic, but what happens when we can alter our physical forms in any way we wish?

RECOMMENDED READ: Give Us a Smile: Tomorrow’s Artificial Companions Could Have Flesh and Blood Faces

That’s the kicker: we’re limited only by our imaginations. More than likely we’ll first see people who look pretty much like people.  Soon, though, we’ll begin to realize that we can become anything we want. With soon-arriving technology, we’ll be able to feel an artificial sex organ just as good, if not better, than the flesh and blood version.

What’s even wilder is that if you get tired of whatever new body part you’ve had installed, then you can just swap it out or upgrade it.

With artificial forms we’ll be able to turn any part of our bodies into sex organs, or use our entire bodies as one. We could make love to clouds, ocean currents, solar winds, or entire planets if we desired.

But we’d still be ourselves. This is where another huge development comes in: the technology that will allow us to become someone else.

Innovation Five: Body Switching

Okay, this one is a bit far out but the idea should be rather easy to understand. First, we begin with the basics of cyberization: direct neural interfaces. Unlike direct neural stimulation, which we chatted about last time, this isn’t just sensing using our brains, but being able to control our new artificial selves like they were our original flesh and blood bodies.

Once we have that, the next step is to link two people together: I see through your eyes, you see through mine; you raise my hand, I raise yours. With enough bandwidth—and some elegant programming—there’s no reason two people connected by wires couldn’t switch physical bodies.

Just think of the sexual possibilities: we could know, without any doubt, what it would be like to physically besomeone else. Why travel when you can step into someone else’s shoes half a world away? Want to be anyone—male, female, or a new gender altogether—for a weekend, a year, a lifetime?

There’s no reason why we couldn’t have artificial bodies designed just for sex play, with unique sensors and totally original sex components. We could share special sensual bodies like we share vacation homes: timeshare eroticism!

Flesh and blood do have their limitations, which is why we will soon see many people choosing to replace flesh and blood for more durable, and flexible, alternatives.

Many will prefer to remain in the bodies they were born in. However, via upcoming new technologies, there’s no reason they couldn’t enjoy a new world of dazzling sexuality either.

Innovation Six: Genetic Engineering

It’s sadly become a frightening concept to some, but the potential to alter the human body on a genetic level shows incredible promise in eliminating so much suffering and pain—as well as changing human sexuality in amazing ways.

We are fast approaching a time when we will be able to clone, or fabricate, pretty much any part of any person we wish. This means organ transplants without tissue rejection—as they’d be fabricated from the recipient’s own DNA—but also that we’ll be able to do incredible things with the human form.

Those with gender dysphoria could be who they always felt they should be. By rewriting our genetic code we could walk in anyone’s physical form; change ourselves for any reason. What happens to bigotry when we can literally see the world through anyone’s race, gender, orientation, age?

As with cyberization, humanity would have close to total freedom of physical form—without giving up their flesh and blood. Want to experience sex as a whale or as an elephant? Drop your gray matter into a vat-grown form of your choosing.  We could live to see a world where changing our bodies would be like changing our clothes: fancy dress, casual, or kinky.

The difficulty with cyborgs is that they still have that pesky meat brain. But with sufficient genetic engineering skill, we could see the death of … death by replacing dead or dying brain cells with new healthy ones.

Hand in hand, these two innovations—artificial organs along with new ones grown from our own DNA—mean that soon our physical selves will be restricted only by our fantasies, sexual or otherwise.

But some of the biggest changes are yet to come. In the future, we will have the ability to not just change how we see the world (real and artificial) or how we interact with it (again, real and artificial), but explore the truly limitless domain of consciousness.

Human or otherwise.

Image sources: Depositphotos

The post Getting Physical: Cyborgs, Mind Switching, and Genetic Engineering appeared first on Future of Sex.

Part one of The Ten Great Sexual Innovations Yet To Come

As the old saying goes: the only constant is change—and the last few years have certainly seen a lot of it. So many changes, in fact, that it’s hard to think of any aspect of human society that hasn’t been touched by technological innovation over the last decade or so.

Books became ebooks, the Internet went from novelty to essential, electric and hybrid vehicles have become ubiquitous, gay marriage changed from “don’t talk about it” to “no big deal” (at least in some countries), and 3D printers left the prototype stage to become at-home appliances—just to hit some highlights.

But the greatest changes are right around the corner. Many of these innovations will occur in one of our favorite areas: sex.

Part one of our three-part tour into future sex developments is this speculation on sensory tech: how our seeing—and feeling—will be more than believing. These incredible sensory advances will be introduced to us via three innovative technologies.

Innovation One: Virtual Reality

Despite some initial clumsy attempts, virtual reality promises to become a societal game changer. Like many huge innovations, the basic idea of virtual reality is essentially simple: an artificial world accessed by miniature monitors over the eyes.  These, coupled with motion sensors, means when you turn your head, the view through those monitors changes as well.

Where the game changing comes in is two pronged. The first is that VR promises a level of total immersion that we have never experienced before. With a VR headset—like the popular Meta Quest—you’ll feel like you’re actually in whatever artificial world you’re visiting.  Right now all we’re missing to complete this total immersion is haptics—touch technology, but that’s right around the corner.

The other prong is part of what drove the ebook revolution in publishing: privacy. With a VR set, no one will know where you are but you.

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With VR you can visit—or create—any erotic world of your choosing in privacy. There is, literally, nothing you could not see nor do in a synthetic reality. As the tech gets better and better, soon the line between “real” reality and a virtual experience will get thinner and thinner.

Gazing into my—albeit cracked—crystal ball, it’s not too difficult to envision a few years from now. With VR we’ll not just be able to see films, but be parts of them. Interactivity will mean that entertainment, erotic or otherwise, will be multi-dimensional and totally immersive.

A video of a young man wearing a VR headset shows how enthusiastic people are already becoming about virtual reality sexual simulations. He can barely be torn away from a demonstration, and we can only imagine what he is seeing from his perspective.

I can hear a few worry-warts fretting about a mass exodus of humanity into artificial realities. Sure, a few might walk off into an sensual/digital fantasy land never to be seen again, but most will stay around.

The reason?  It’s what happens when you superimpose the total freedom of artificial reality with the real world: augmented reality.

Innovation Two: Augmented reality

The problem, if there is one, with virtual reality is in that total immersion it cuts the user off from reality. But when VR is combined with digital cameras and motion tracking tech, what we end up with is called augmented reality.

Again, technologically, augmented reality is rather easy to comprehend. In fact, we’ve seen some developments with gear such as the recently released Apple Vision Pro.

In essence, it’s a virtual reality rig, but one that is projected onto the inside of a pair of glasses.

Here’s where things get really interesting.  One of the great curses of mankind is ignorance. Even with the Internet at our fingertips, with smartphones and the like, there’s a lot that we could know that we don’t bother accessing. With augmented reality, though, you could glance at anything and instantly know everything you ever wanted to know about it.

Virtual reality means that we’ll be able to escape into artificial worlds where we’ll be able to experience and interact with anything, sexually or otherwise. But with augmented reality we’ll be able to learn, understand, and share anything in the real world with anyone else.

Again, staring into the misty future, it’s easy—and thrilling—to imagine a future where looking at someone through a pair of augmented reality glasses, or contact lenses, could tell you that person’s erotic interests, availability, their orientation, their gender preference, or anything else they want to share with you or the world.

This information would be overlaid in your environment as part of your visual experience. Sexual ignorance and guesswork could become things of the dim and dusty past.

Innovation Three: Direct Neurostimulation

With virtual and augmented reality, we can see both the world of our dreams and all about the world around us. But for all their power, both still lack total and complete immersion: pure sensory stimulation.  Even when haptic technology gets good enough that we can touch and be touched from a distance, there will still be a barrier between lifelike and life.

This is where direct neurostimulation comes in. Yet again, the idea is simple: wiring human minds either together or to a computer. Yes, the technology is very much in its infancy, but we are already seeing huge developments. For the first time, using neurostimulation, the deaf can hear, the blind can see, and people can seamlessly operate prosthetic limbs.

Very soon we’ll either have the technology to literally run wires into our minds or we’ll be accessing it through less invasive and icky means via dermal sensors.

In short, direct neurostimulation is the ultimate sensory technology. With it we’ll be able to control every part of what we see, hear, feel, taste—and feel pleasure with!

This future is going to be interesting. To put it mildly. With direct neurostimulation, we’ll soon be able to access every part of the human mind. Unlike with virtual reality, these constructs will be as good as from realreality. We’ll be able to couple not just with our bodies but with every part of our consciousness.

As with augmented reality we’ll be able to have enhanced perceptions, plus some senses that people may very well like to invent.

In this future, we’ll be able to record what we experience and then play it back or edit it into something new. We’ll be able to actually see, feel, and comprehend what living someone else’s life is actually like. Want to try being queer, or straight, or asexual?  Want to have the memories of anyone, ever?

Let’s go a little farther: how about puppeting? If you have total control of the human brain there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to switch minds with someone else. Never mind editing and recording, with this level of technology you could swap physical forms with other people. Take a vacation away from yourself—by being in someone else’s body.

Don’t Fear The Future

Agreed, some of these sensory and sexual developments may, at first, appear to be a little staggering, but keep in mind how our present, day-to-day lives might seem from someone only a few decades in the past. The fact is virtual reality, augmented reality, and direct neurostimulation are coming—and probably sooner than you think.

Very soon we’ll see incredible innovations in how we look at the world—or even create entirely artificial realities to experience with brand new senses.

One thing, for sure, as with ebooks and smartphones and so many other pieces of fantastic technology, they’ll be integral components of our lives, erotic or otherwise.

It’s just up to our imaginations to see—and feel, and more—just how intimate we can get with all this new technology.

Image source: Depositphotos

The post Sensing the Future: VR, AR and Neurostimulation appeared first on Future of Sex.