Vivid's thrust to penetrate the market, therefore, was blocked, and The Cyber Sex Suit had to hit the showers. But cybersex and the so-called "feel-good internet" lived on, fed by consumer concern that, as Kyle Machulis adroitly surmises, teledildonics were long overdue: "Full body actuation of virtual environments is something we've seen in sci-fi for decades, so it's probably coming at some point. Whether it will be next week or the same time as the flying car is a good question."
I asked Regina Lynn, sex tech columnist for Wired, whether she thought there was still a need for a device like The Cyber Sex Suit.
"A need?" she responded. "No. But a desire? Yes. And I should not be so quick to dismiss it as a need, actually. We're always finding new ways to have sex. I think the first application of a sex suit would be for parties and sex workers, though - too expensive to have just as a home toy, for the average person."
But would she use one?
"Of course I would give it a try," she replied. "Why not? As to whether I would buy one, I doubt it. For me, the stimulation of long-distance sex is almost entirely mental, emotional, spiritual - the physical kicks in at the end, but it's a long delicious gradual building of desire and pleasure and want. I'd feel claustrophobic in a suit, I think."
What about Kyle? As one of the foremost experts on teledildonics, I was curious to hear his opinion of the device, if he'd used it, would use it and why.
"There's not that much to be an expert on, honestly," Kyle points out. "This isn't rocket science. Hell, it's hardly high-school-level engineering. There's very, very little that you could call technologically advanced about the current state of commercial teledildonics. It could've been done a decade ago, people were predicting it two decades ago, and yet, here we sit with the same ol' boring hardware that's existed for years.
"But, for all intents and purposes, sure, I'm an expert."
But what about The Cyber Sex Suit?
"I only deal," he claims. "I don't partake. I'd probably rip it apart and figure out how it worked. Then use it for something non-sexual."
"I've noticed that many teledildonics aficionados suffer from a certain level of schizophrenia," says Lara Crigger, a technology and game industry journalist who's extensively researched the subject of teledildonics for both the web and print publications. "Some are the kind of people who do it just to get a kick out of shocking the naïve or closed-minded. People who see prurience as like an art form. Something to be embraced, even celebrated.
"But then, there are others who like to pretend that their hobby isn't about sex; or, at the very least, that the sex is some First Principle that they try to move on from. It's almost like they're trying to transfer the kink from the maker onto the observer; that is, should you focus on the toy's sexual possibilities instead of its schematics or design, well, then you're the one with the dirty mind."
So it would seem that one of the major roadblocks to mainstream success for teledildonics, in addition to fear of electric shock, is the acceptance gap: the perception that online-enabled sex toys are just for pervs. To bridge that gap, one would have to convince people that the toys themselves are safe for non-perv usage. After all, it's not like having rubber genitalia lying around is exactly acceptable in polite society. A new generation of toys, however, promises to help remedy that.
Next stop: masturbating with an iPod.
Groove is in the Heart
"Everyone loves music. Everyone loves sex," claims Suki, the maker of the stylish-looking iPod accessory, OhMiBod. The device is, in essence, a sleek-looking vibrating dildo that plugs into an iPod or any other device with a headphone jack, and then vibrates to the rhythm of your music. It even comes with a splitter so that you can have your iDildo and headphones plugged in at the same time.
