The march of modern technology is driven to a large extent by men’s desire for pornography. That is true today, will be true tomorrow, and will bring changes to society that today we cannot imagine.
The evolution of the cell phone.
The graph is a joke, but describes an important truth: porn has been fueling the leading edge of technology for a long time. Some technologies for whom porn fueled its early development: printing, photography, microfiche (late 1800’s), subtitles and closed captioning for the hearing impaired, cable television, and video cassette recorders, digital cameras, bulletin board systems (early 1990s first generation internet), streaming video (early 1990s), webcams (~1995), e-commerce (mid to late 1990’s). Also For a fun version turn (as always) to Cracked.com: “5 Ways Porn Created the Modern World“. For a more scholarly review, see “Pornography, Video, and the Internet” by Jonathan Coopersmith, IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, Spring 2000 (here’s a CNN story about his work) and “Pornography Drives Technology” by Peter Johnson, Federal Communications Law Journal, November 1996.
These were small effects compared to what is coming. This is equivalent to the early phases of flight — gliders, biplanes — with canvas and wood monoplanes just coming to market. Soon we will have the equivalent of WWII B-17s and B-29s. The next decade we will see the pornographic equivalent of B-52s. In two more decades we’ll have the equivalent of 747s. Men’s sex drives provide the early adopters to fund cutting edge tech.
To understand what will happen, look at the history of sexbots in films and TV.
The history of sexbots
“This will blow up the world. It will make crack cocaine look like decaffeinated coffee.”
— Anonymous comment about sexbots (source here).
Just as men have looked into the sky and dreamed of flying, men have dreamed of women that were beyond their reach — beautiful with pleasant personalities, unavailable to the majority of beta and omega men. One of the first in film and TV was “My Living Doll
Watch the full opening (it’s only 30 seconds long).
The 1970s saw several versions, most notably in the 1975 film The Stepford Wives
Two key things to understand
We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.
— Attributed to Roy Charles Amara as paraphrased by Robert X. Cringely.
First, sexbots are coming. Not every guy will want them. But not every guy wanted to read Hustler, but enough did to make Larry Flint a rich man. Here is a video of a first generation sexbot (it is not like a woman, just as an 1849 glider was not a Boeing Dreamliner 787).
- “Sexbot slaves” by Leah Reich at Aeon, June 2014 — “Thanks to new technology, sex toys are becoming tools for connection; will sexbots reverse that trend?”
- “Would You Have Sex With a Robot? The Age of the Sexbot Is Fast Approaching” by Lynn Stuart at AlterNet, August 2014 — “Some experts predict a not-so-distant future of human-robot sex …and love.”
- “Sex Dolls That Talk Back”, New York Times, June 2015.
- “Artificial intelligence: coming to a sexbot near you” by Aaron Krumins at ExtremeTech, June 2015.
- “Sex with robots to be ‘the norm’ in 50 years, expert claims” by David Watkinson in the UK Mirror, August 2015 — “People may also begin to fall in love with their virtual reality partners.”
Second, feminism has accelerated this trend. Women’s economic independence from men plus government’s almost unavoidable extraction of child support are liberation on a scale probably unimaginable to first wave suffragettes. For the first time in history they can dress and act independent of men’s preferences. On Themyscira, the home of the Amazons in the new Wonder Woman film (“When it comes to procreation, men are essential, but for pleasure, not necessary.”), women dress as men usually imagine women dress when they’re alone. Tight outfits, miniskirts, and fancy shoes with high heels.
Ten minutes on a college campus reveals the truth. Left to themselves, without the need to attract a husband, women dress for comfort. As is their right to do. This change in appearances, and the accompanying changes in gender relations, has boosted the market for porn — soft-core in films and TV, and hard core via the internet.
Well-dressed compliant sexbots will hit western society like a thunderbolt. Feminists might attempt to ban them. But banning merchandise used at home will be difficult in the US. Sexbots are not conceptually just sex toys, including the vibrators loved by feminists.
A prediction
The people now in college will be the first generation in which a large fraction — over a third — do not marry (excluding first and second generation immigrants, still held by their native culture). A smaller but large fraction will not have children.
Many of the women will see no need to marry. Many will stay single until their ability to get a husband diminishes. Many are in the lower class where such social structures have broken under the combination of economic stress and social change. Cats will be the new children. Small birds will either evolve to survive in a nation of abundant super-predictors, or join the passenger pigeon in extinction.
Many men will be either insufficiently unattractive to attract a wife (e.g., by jail, income, drugs, personality, physique, or obesity). Many men will be able to marry but consider marriage a bad risk (1 in 3 odds of a wife playing the game of romance – marriage – kids – put them in first grade – divorce – child support) — choosing some combination of casual sex, prostitutes, and (increasingly) sexbots.
This will vaporize many of the social and economic institutions in today’s America. Life will go on. Perhaps better. Perhaps worse. We will know which by comparison with other nations whose people have taken other paths. It is an experiment that we perform on ourselves, with our children as guinea pigs. We are confident of the result — as seen in the comments to this series of posts. Time will tell if it is warranted.
For More Information
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about romance, about women and gender, and especially these…
- The feminist revolutionaries have won. Insurgents have arisen to challenge the new order. As always, they’re outlaws.
- The war of the sexes heats up: society changes as men learn the Dark Triad.
- Men are “going Galt”. Marriage is dying. Will society survive?
- Men are abandoning the rat race, & changing American society.
- Why men are avoiding work and marriage.
- Will today’s young men marry? America’s future depends which of these answers is right.
- A brief guide to the new war of the sexes. Both sides are 100% right.
- America’s war of the sexes gets worse. Here’s why.
Books pointing to our future America with new gender relations
I don’t know of any. Please post your suggestions in the comments.
