Want to Have Sex With Your Favorite Porn Star? "Teledildonics" Could Make It Happen

USBs: They’re not just for external storage anymore. A quick glance through any catalogue of geekery online will reveal a plethora of crazy accessories, from coffee mug warmers to personal fans to little lamps to light your keyboard. Once we reached this point with USB plug’n’play technology, it was inevitable that our friend Rule 34 would kick in: "If it exists, there is porn of it." Are we talking about sex toys with USB cords? You bet your hard drive! Prepare to get...yep, I’ll say it: Plugged in! (Sorry.)

If you thought virtual reality was intense, imagine this: You queue up your favorite porno on your computer, plug in a sex toy, and the toy precisely mimics the motions of your porn star du jour. You can watch a hot fuck and feel it at the same time. If this sounds like science fiction to you, get used to living in the future -- this technology is here! You’re a Google search and a brown paper parcel away from putting one more chink in the armor between reality and fantasy.

Granted, it takes a lot of time and work to create the synergy between movie and toy, so this market is limited to a handful of titles from very expensive services, but pretty much all tech begins as a high-priced niche commodity. Even this lofty interactive-porno concept owes its inception to a long line of lesser but still expensive computer-compatible wank tools. Let’s take a look, shall we?

Let your fingers do the walking, 21st Century style…

The Oh-Mi-Bod, while not strictly a computer item, still deserves credit for its ingenious "plug in to headphone outlet and the dildo pulses in time to the music" concept, as well as its status as probably the most widely available, quickly recognizable techno-toy out there. (And for those of us who have always felt that music is really its own kind of porn, nothing’s going to quite get our motors running like a device that creates this kind of synergy between sound and sex.)

Teledildonics or cyberdildonics are sex toys that can be controlled remotely by computer. The field of teledildonics has been incredibly influential in the creation of sex toys compatible with computers, although its development has been unsteady and its future appears uncertain. You know how video chat meant you could look your partner in the eye and show them how they got you so hot you had to give yourself some five-fingered loving? Teledildonics seeks to go one step further by allowing a partner to control your sex toy over the Internet. While it’s a great idea, it struggles with those twin monsters of any startup tech: cost and performance. It’s not a bargain investment, and the technology has yet to reach the kind of accuracy that would really make things interesting.

The general field of teledildonics has allowed for immense development both in the sexual applications of social technology and public awareness of such potential. The longevity of its appeal is impressive given how quickly tech fads fade: the term was coined in 1975 and has never really left the sex-tech spotlight. Its longevity may partially be driven by its pansexual appeal; plenty of applications exist to interface with any sort of genitalia, and partner-driven teledildonics are truly blind to orientation or gender identity. Some of the content available for video-synched toys has begun to branch out beyond heterosexual content as well, likely due to enough profit from the broader-based "sure thing" of straight porn to begin widening its appeal.

Tearing down the wall between you and your favorite porn star

So where are we going with this, as a culture? What shall we do with all of this sexual technology? The toy that moves like your favorite porn star is an interesting twist on the popular "POV" video style, wherein one partner holds the camera to allow the viewer to imagine themselves in the cameraperson's place. But the synchronized toy concept takes an important step further: You could easily be surprised by a physical sensation you didn’t see coming, which is a far cry from simply watching something unexpected in a movie. The concept of physical surprise isn’t something that’s been achievable without a sentient partner until now, and it's likely to confuse us simple humans for some time until our brains catch up and assimilate the advancement of technology.