Gotta love technology… :shake:

Cyber Sex Just Got a Whole Lot More Real

https://www.yahoo.com/style/cyber-sex-just-got-a-whole-lot-more-real-110187627993.html

Two-dimensional sexting may soon go the way ofthe rotary phone, thanks to a bevy of new technology helping long-distance couples get closer. The burgeoning field of teledildonics—yes, this is a real word and I’m going to just abbreviate it “TD” from now on because I really can’t look at it without giggling like a 13-year-old—allows couples to connect sex toys via Bluetooth and an Internet connection for realistic, high-tech sexual interaction.

Kiiroo, an Amsterdam-based company, is at the forefront of the TD revolution, and is generally acknowledged as the industry’s leade; it just won an XBiz Award for best sex toy. One of Kiiroo’s founders, Toon Timmermans, said the idea for the company came after another founder watched the 1993 movie Demolition Man, a futuristic story starring Sylvester Stallone and Sandra Bullock. “Currently everything out there is two dimensional because you can see each other and hear each other, but you cannot feel each other,” Timmermans said. “That’s what Kiiroo’s all about. It’s about bringing feeling over the internet and to bring people who are far apart closer together.”

Kiiroo took capacitive touch technology, which is what makes your iPhone do things when you touch it, and applied it to sex toys. The woman uses a phallic-shaped vibrator, called the Pearl, and the man has a sleeve-like male counterpart, called the Onyx, which Kiiroo developed with Fleshlight (link very NSFW), a company known for its realistic masturbation sleeves. When the woman uses her toy, it senses the movements of her internal muscles and beams it to the man’s toy, which contains mechanized rings that simulate squeezing and up and down movement. The man’s device can both send out a signal and receive a signal, which Timmermans says makes it ideal for gay couples, too. You use your computer as a control panel, which also provides real-time video access to everything that’s happening, a la old-fashioned Skype cyber sex. The pair of toys costs $378.

The past year has been a good one for TD. Eddy Olivares, the chief marketing officer for Lovense, a company which launched in 2009 with interactive vibrators and has now expanded into TD, says that the company saw increased demand in 2014 and averaged over 15% growth month over month last year. “Eighty five percent of our transactions include both toys. Our typical users are couples between 25 and 50 years old,” Olivares said. “They are people who are comfortable enough with their sexuality to try a sex toy that is a little weird. They are usually in a committed long distance relationship or have one partner that is a frequent traveler.” The toys usually go for $199 each, but you can get them for $99 during the current Valentine’s Day special. Not your average box of chocolate…

But how close is TD to the real thing? One Lovense user, Lauren (her name has been changed), lives in the Northern Hemisphere and her boyfriend is in the Southern Hemisphere. “It’s so different from any other toy I’d seen or experienced,” she said in an email. “Once we decided to try it, it was far from weird and really quite wonderful. It’s a far step above phone sex, sexting, or even video sex, because of the added advantage of your partner being able to have control over your pleasure.  In that way, it probably provides the best proxy to real sex of any options of which I am aware.” 

Timmermans noted that the technology has definitely raised some ethical questions among users, though. He notes that he thinks couples in certain religious groups who don’t generally believe in sex before marriage could use the technology. He also recently had a conversation with a woman about whether using the technology with a video, or so-called “webcam girl,” constitutes cheating. My thought is that if you use the technology with a live person who isn’t the person you’re in a committed relationship with, than it probably counts as infidelity, but technology is constantly changing the answers to all of these questions. “It’s a new level,” Timmermans noted. “It’s a new dimension.”

Remember that old AT&T slogan, “Reach out and touch someone”? Teledildonics is definitely giving that a whole new meaning.