Barry Collins of PC Pro magazine initiated the debate by asking  ‘Whatever happened to Second Life?’ and after wandering around deserted virtual streets and shopping malls began to realise that everybody was busy visiting the newly opened ‘Red Light District’ of Second Life, ironically introduced in an effort to improve its image.

A little research soon reveals why Second Life seems a lot quieter than the numbers suggest. In June, the company opened Zindra – Second Life’s “adult continent”, a huge plot of the virtual universe dedicated to content rated as “mature”, “adult” or even “PG”.

Given that sex and gambling accounted for the majority of the “most popular places” when I first visited, it was suddenly apparent why I was as lonely as a cloud in the parts of the Second Life universe that wouldn’t upset the clergy.

So why did Linden establish its very own red-light district? It seems the company decided it was time to clean up its act…

In an act of fairness, PC Pro gave Second Life CEO Mark  Kingdon a chance to reply to the accusations, which you can read in full at : Lindon Lab boss : sex isn’t the key to second life

“In a major city there might be a place where you find adult entertainment but it might be in a specially zoned area. We’ve used that principle to reorganise Second Life.

“About 6% of the regions in Second Life are zoned ‘adult’,” he added. “And we’ve looked at adult very extensively over the last year, through many different lenses… and we’ve found it a very average in terms of the prevalence of adult content.

“There are certain things Second Life gets tagged with and that’s one of them. When you look at the facts, it’s actually quite different.”

RealTouch combines a proprietary haptic device with specially encoded online video that integrates sight, sound and touch to create a uniquely immersive experience.“While Hollywood is still trying to perfect 3-D with movies like Avatar, we’ve leapfrogged that by delivering the sensory dimension of touch. RealTouch is the first device that can let a man actually feel and experience the action he’s watching in a video.” Plus, he says, RealTouch is a revolutionary consumer product that not so much ends piracy as it renders it irrelevant.

How does RealTouch combat piracy? Simple says Coffman, “You can pirate the movie but you can’t pirate the experience. It would be like trying to steal a roller coaster.”

Click to order the RealTouch virtual sex device here

An article appeared today on CNN asking only the first question, although I’m sure many of its male readers, at least, were led to ask the second question themselves.  According to the article, the vision of Avatar is far-sighted, if not far-fetched.  A neurology professor is quoted as saying that “the biggest challenges will be emotion and thought -how to make another organism think what you think, to feel what you feel”.  Another points out that we have little understanding of how consciousness is formed in our own bodies, let alone how to induced it in others.

These arguments, although valid (and I’m in no way scientifically qualified to dispute them) seem to me to miss the point.  Nobody is surely talking about actually projecting ones actual consciousness into another body.  It will appear to the ‘owner’ of the avatar that he really is in that substitute body, but this is, at least in some sense, an illusion created by the fact that his sensory inputs and outputs have been wired up to his new body. If the avatar is destroyed, the owner is unharmed, however if HIS brain was killed, the avatar could have no consciousness.

There seems to me no philosophical objection to the possibility of avatar bodies.  In fact, such things seem to be an inevitable future progression of teleprescence and haptic technology that is already being developed today (some of which is described in the CNN article).  Eventually, we will be having sex with each other using substitute ‘avatar’ bodies.

The other interesting thing about Avatar in relation to virtual sex is the apparant manner in which the avatars are ‘grown’.  In other words the Avatars are actual organic bodies that have either been cloned or produced using stem cell technology. 

The use of stem cell technology for virtual sex is something that has interested me for sometime. The commonplace use of such technology to clone or to generate new organs appears to be just around the corner.  How long will it be, I wonder, before the highly realistic private parts, as well as the skin, hair, and eyes, of high-end sex dolls will be the actual organic clones of famous pornstars? Fucking the Fleshlight vagina of Lupe Fuentes would take on a whole new meaning if it was the actual physical clone of her pussy, rather than just modelled upon it.  It’s certainly likely that ‘Roxxy’ not withstanding, the first genuine artificially intelligent sex ‘robots’ will largely be composed of organic metal.

Well it seems that these complaints have been heard, as there are well founded rumours that AEBN will soon be introducing alternative pricing models, ranging from a very low monthly subscription to use the RealTouch without video or the possibility of actually buying video clips to use as many times as required with the RealTouch.

 Ownership- set price per clip and you get to own the clip for as long as you want (the only issue being if a studio has to pull it down for legal/contract reasons). You couldn’t download the file and store it locally but to view the clip it would only cost you one price, and then you could watch it as much as you want.

Rental- Keep the clip and watch it as much as you want for a week at a time…if you don’t feel like spending the money to “buy” a clip.

Pay Per Minute- This model would still be there, so you could buy a package and watch when you want, or be able to “sample” a whole clip in order to buy it.

Membership- How about paying a monthly fee to get “tracks” with no video just making the device work and can be played as much as you want? Again this would require a internet connection, but the membership fee would be low (10$ range?) and it would be unlimited.

In the meantime, you have nothing to lose by buying your RealTouch now, as you currently get a good 60 minutes free video use to start you off.

Click to buy the RealTouch from AEBN now.

They also intend to film entire pornographic scenes where the man involved is painted green. When the scene is viewed on a specially prepared iPhone, the guy disappears but the lady does not, and the green man is replaced by the video the user is taking of … sexting! Sexting! Sexting!Pink Visual has always been possibly the most tech-focused, large-scale porn firm. They were the one of the first to do a special iPhone site, and they’re available on Boxee. Seriously. They’re available on Boxee.

Pink Visual expects to have augmented-reality DVDs by the end of this year.

Seen at : Pink Visual’s Augmented Reality Puts You In Porn

VIRTUAL SEX

Virtual sex is right around the corner with toys such as the Real Touch (realtouch.com) already causing a sexual stir.

High-tech toys will plug guys straight into their X-rated DVDs, so what they watch on the screen will happen to them on their sofa via hands-free pleasure kit.

 PHONE APPS

Mobile phones are set to do much more than ring your bell! From location based dating applications to custom-designed sex toys (such as VibraExciter), mobile phones are a sex essential for the new decade.

 ECO VIBES

The move towards green sex toys will pick up pace, with wood, metal, steel and even porcelain taking the place of rubber.

Batteries are also on their way out, with more rechargeable and battery-free toys hitting the market (like Earth Angel and USB charged toys like the Luminia).

 WIRED FOR SEX

Couples will get wired for sex.

Load up free video chat software Skype and a new Internet-control vibe and you can pleasure and see your partner no matter how far apart you are.

Breanne Benson

The Adult Entertainment Expo (AEE) that just took place in Las Vegas is always timed to run concurrently with the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and never before have the two appeared so united in pushing new technology.  Whilst the likes of Sony and Panasonic were hyping up the necessity of every American having one of their 3D tvs in the lounge, the best reason of all for splashing out on a new upgrade was being promoted at the AEE – 3D Porn!

‘Bad girls in 3D’ is an American company that is offering the complete 3D home package – stereoscopic glasses, a 60″ Mitubishi 3D television and a small PC that connects to the web, and with a monthly subscription, will beam the world’s first streaming 3D channel and with it, non-stop porn into your living room.

The subscription to the channel costs $19.95 but producer Lance Johnson told reporters that his company plans to sell stand alone 3d Porn DVDs once sufficient numbers of households had bought 3D televisions – hopefully by the end of this year.

Stereoscopic porn has a surprisingly long history with the first 3D porn movie grossing an incredible (for the time) $27 million when it was released in 1969. But somewhat strangely, an adult industry that is almost dying on its feet has been rather slow to embrace the technology.  With the success of Avatar and companies like Sony investing hugely in the belief that we will all embrace 3D, it surely won’t be long before the porn world climbs upon the bandwagon in greater numbers. Meanwhile, experienced porn actress Breanne Benson was said to be ‘nervous but excited’ at the prospect of becoming the first 3D pornstar of the 21st century.