A campaign has been launched recently to ban the development of sex robots. They argue that the creation of such robots “will contribute to detrimental relationships between men and woman, adults and children, men and men and women and women”, they forgot to mention men and animals or woman and dildos. I, deliberately, will not mention any names because this is not the brainchild of a specific person but a general issue.
From which point on is it ethically questionable to use a machine for sexual satisfaction or fulfillment; is a dildo a robot, whose use will contribute to the deterioration of human society, or is it just a device that has evolved from a carved piece of wood?
Technology is advancing at a rate we can hardly keep up with. Some of us grew up in a time where we could follow how processors got faster and screen resolutions got higher; today we acknowledge that everything is getting faster and better. A decade ago we were discussing if the moon missions were real or a hoax, today we are looking forward to the first manned Mars mission. The problem is, nobody talks about sex, we think about it a lot, but we try to ignore that it exists. The longest space mission was nearly 438 days, by Valeri Polyakev, we take it for granted that he did not have sex in space, but only after a few sexless weeks on Earth everybody would have been trying to find him a date.
sex and science fiction>>>>
Sex and science fiction
The idea of sex with robots or virtual sex with holographic projections has been around since the beginnings of science fiction literature. It has been thematized in numerous books and movies, and is not a sleazy, back alley kind of thing. At an early stage in evolution, mother nature decided to give us the ability (or chance), to have sex whenever we wanted to, regardless of the need to reproduce, now we have to cope with it.
I do not know if there are any credible numbers on how many people consume pornography, cheat on their partner or masturbate but I dare to claim that it is high. Apparently the notion of uncomplicated sex, on command, is appealing; therefor sex robots are inevitable. What worries me are the emotional ties that can emerge. The robotic dog Aibo is an example of how people can become attached to a “gadget”, since Sony has stopped delivering parts, the owners are experiencing heartbreaking “deaths” of their metallic companions. How will it be with humanoid, lifesize gadgets that are programmed to please?
In our quest to conquer the universe, we are planning to send astronauts on a one way mission to Mars. How are scientists planning to cope with sexual tensions? Will we send a group of castrated men, women with “toys”, couples that could end up killing each other OR astronauts accompanied by mechanical partners; which brings us to the question – is it immoral or ethically wrong for an astronaut to have sex with a robot?
To tell the truth, I have no idea.
