by David Levy
medical diagnosis
pets and
sex dolls and
sex robots for
sex surrogates as
therapeutic robots
thinking, machine
Thomas, Sue
Thrillhammer sex machine
Tilden, Mark
Tinnakul, Nither
Tissot, Samuel
tone, vocal
touch technologies
tourism, sex
toys. See also dolls attachment and
robot(see also electronic objects; virtual pets) sex
(see technologies, sex)
traits, similarity and
transference See also attachment
transience See also death
transitional objects
Treays, Jane
Treiman, Rebecca
Triebenbacher, Sandra
Trost, Robert
trumpet-playing robot
trust
Tsuchiya, Hideo
Tuke, William
Turing, Alan
Turkle, Sherry
uniqueness, attachment and
United States
university lecturer robot
unusualness, romantic love and
vacuum robots
vaginas, artificial
values. See social norms
van Neck, Anne
variety, paying for sex and
Vaucanson, Jacques
Velasquez, Juan
Venus sex machines
vibrators development of
fear of
for men
popularity of
Virilio, Paul
virtual attraction
virtual girlfriends
virtual growth
virtual people. See humanoid robots
virtual pets. See also electronic objects AIBO robotic dog
human-computer relationships and (see also computers)
human-pet relationships and
NeCoRo robotic cat
robotic
screen-based
Tamagotchi
transition from, to humanoid robots
virtual reality
Vis, Elene
vocal tone
Vohs, Kathleen
voice-based emotion recognition
Voith, Victoria
von Kempelen, Wolfgang
Vyzas, Elias
WABOT projects
Wachspress, How
Wakamaru humanoid robot
walking robots
water-powered automata
wearables, affective
Webb, Joanne
Web sites See also Internet
Weizenbaum, Joseph
West, Jessica
Wiener, Norbert
Wilks, Yorick
Wilson, Edward O.
Winick, Charles
Winnicott, Donald
Wohl, Richard
women acceptance of robots by
evolving status of
gender of computers and robots
men paying, for sex
paying men for sex
reasons for sex
seductive behaviors of
sex dolls for (see sex dolls)
sex machines for sex robots for (see also sex robots)
sexual drives of, vs. men
Tamagotchis and
vibrators for
wrestling robots
Wright, Peter
Yeager, Bill
Young, Robert
Zajonc, Robert
Zeki, Semir
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank those who assisted in various ways during the writing and editing of this book.
Christine Fox and Bill Yeager carefully read what I had expected to be a near-final draft, and each of them contributed a number of important suggestions for improvements. Ray Kirsch and Heather Allan read a subsequent draft and provided encouragement. My literary agent, Mollie Glick, and my editor at HarperCollins, Rakesh Satyal, made many further suggestions that enhanced the typescript. Rakesh also gave me a few useful lessons that improved my knowledge of the American language.
Dr. Cynde Moya offered some helpful advice on early-twentieth-century sex artifacts and brought to my attention two of the exhibits from Magnus Hirschfeld’s former collection (the artificial vagina on page 178 and the fornicatory dolls on page 181). She also kindly provided me with images of both of these, as reproduced in her Ph.D. thesis “Artificial Vaginas and Sex Dolls: An Erotological Investigation.” Alan Pate provided the original source information for explaining the origin of the term “Dutch wives.” Professor Jaap van den Herik offered encouragement to the point of inviting me to submit an academically redrafted version of my text for a Ph.D. at the University of Maastricht. Andrew Keatley and Alastair Levy assisted with the technicalities of
some of the images. Kimballe Thomerson was my Japanese-speaking intermediary in my communications with the manufacturer Orient Doll.
I also wish to thank the following for granting me permission to reproduce certain images and text: Peter Menzel/Science Photo Library for Peter Menzel’s photograph of Kismet (page 13); the New Yorker for Peter Steiner’s cartoon “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” (page 42); Getty Images for the photograph of the Repliee Q1 robot (page 146); Chris Buck for his photograph of David Hanson’s robot head (page 163); John Suler for the extract from his article “Mom, Dad, Computer (Transference Reactions to Computers)” in his electronic book Psychology of Cyberspace (page 191); Jane Treays and the BBC for the quotations from the TV documentary What Sort of Gentleman Are You After? (pages 214–15); Orient Industries for the company’s photograph of one of their Orient Doll products (page 248); Asian Sex Gazette (www.asiansexgazette.com) for Mark Schreiber’s article “A Jewel in Japan’s Hi-Tech Crown: Sex Dolls” (pages 249–50); Mainichi newspapers for Ryann Connell’s article “Rent-a-Doll Blows Hooker Market Wide Open” (pages 251–52); Dave Lampert for the image of the Sybian “Lovemaster” sex machine (page 254) and its inserts (page 255); and Paul Gaertner for the photograph of the Stallion XL sex machine (page 258).
About the Author
DAVID LEVY is an internationally recognized expert on artificial intelligence. He is president of the International Computer Games Association and in 1997 led the team that won the Loebner Prize—the world championship for conversational computer software. In 2006 he became the first person ever to present papers on intimate relationships with robotic partners at an international conference. He is also the author of Robots Unlimited. Levy lives in London with his wife, Christine, and their cat.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
ALSO BY DAVID LEVY
Robots Unlimited: Life in a Virtual Age
How Computers Play Chess (with M. M. Newborn)
Heuristic Programming in Artificial Intelligence: The First Computer Olympiad (with D. F. Beal)
How Fischer Plays Chess
Heuristic Programming in Artificial Intelligence 2: The Second Computer Olympiad (with D. F. Beal)
Computer Games I
Computer Games II
Computer Chess Compendium
Computer Gamesmanship
Techniques de Programmation des Jeux
The Joy of Computer Chess
All About Chess and Computers (with M. M. Newborn)
More About Chess and Computers (with M. M. Newborn)
1976 U.S. Computer Chess Championship
Chess and Computers
The World Computer Chess Championship (with J. E. Hayes)
Credits
Jacket Photograph © Javier Pierini/Getty Images
Jacket Design by Will Staehle
Copyright
LOVE AND SEX WITH ROBOTS. Copyright © 2007 by Itzy. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable
right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © OCTOBER 2007 ISBN: 9780061860386
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)
Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
55 Avenue Road, Suite 2900
Toronto, ON, M5R, 3L2, Canada
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com
* Described by Sherry Turkle in The Second Self.
* Also called machine intelligence.
† Heuristics are commonsense but often imperfect rules of thumb, designed to speed up the process of finding solutions to certain types of problems.
‡ The accented letter C is pronounced like ch in “chicken.”
§ Also known as Hero.
** Until 1938 there had been some doubt about Heron’s dates, some sources believing him to have lived around 150 B.C. and others around A.D. 250. Then Otto Neugebauer noted that Heron had written about a “recent eclipse,” which, from the information given by Heron in his writings, was dated to one that took place at Alexandria on March 13, A.D. 62.
* An extremely comprehensive and valuable account of the history of such automata is provided in two papers by Jessica Riskin.2, 3
† The only known example still extant is in the Musée Flaubert in Rouen, France, a museum of the history of medicine. Two photographs appear in Nina Gelbart’s The King’s Midwife.
* Asimov’s laws, the first three of which were introduced to the public in his 1942 short story “Runaround,” are “1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.” Later Asimov added the Zeroth Law: “A robot may not injure humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.”
* Sometimes called humanoids.
† The Web site www.androidworld.com provides an extensive survey, with photographs, both of historical android projects and of current androids and domestic robots.
* Cybernetics is the science of control and communication, with an emphasis on self-controlling and self-adaptive systems—that is, autonomous systems that can learn.
* The term “transference” was originally coined in psychology to describe the process whereby a significant relationship early in one’s life can be responsible for transferring one’s feelings about that person to a psychoanalyst encountered later in life. For example, a patient who had a cold and distant father might view her psychoanalyst as being cold and distant. As transference theory developed within the field of psychology, so the term also came to refer to a similar phenomenon with people other than one’s psychoanalyst. Recent psychoanalytic thinking has further adapted the term to apply “to relationships people have with modern technologies, especially computers.” 5 The subject of transference is discussed further in chapter 5.
† See pages 97–99.
‡ See pages 16–17.
* Soccer matches between teams of robots have become a major international technical sport since its inception in 1996.
† Some two thousand bytes of data.
* Or, more generally, between a child and its primary caregiver.
* Throughout this book, when discussing the interaction between a user and a computer, I employ the word “computer” to mean the combination of the computer hardware (the box, the keyboard, the mouse, and the screen) with whatever software it is running (the programs that make the computer do clever things). What the user actually interacts with is the software. The computer keyboard, the mouse, the text on the computer screen, and any speech output that the user hears are all merely the means by which the user interacts with the software. The software itself is invisible, leading the user to talk about his interaction as being with the computer rather than with the computer-software combination.
* We shall return to the subject of attachment in chapter 3.
* Given the social mores of the time, the vast majority of these couples would not have been living together but would instead have been living in different apartments in the same building.
* See the section “Falling in Love on the Internet,” later in this chapter.
* Researchers know the general area of the brain where various functions occur, such as speech, sensation, and memory. An fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) scan provides a picture of the brain and helps to determine precisely which part of the brain is dealing with certain functions.
† The average length of time these students had been in love was twenty-nine months.
* Lawrence Belove (in 1980), Philip Shaver et al. (in 1987), and Dorothy Tennov (in 1979).
† However, proximity can lead to being alone with the love object, which is one of the ten causes.
* How well people’s similarities match, how well they “fit together,” is not only important in bringing them together, it is also a key factor in how gratifying their relationship will be and how long it is likely to be sustained.
* See the section “Why People Fall in Love,” page 33.
* See the final sentence of the section “Why People Fall in Love,” page 35.
* This is not the case if both parties decide from the outset to use webcams and speech-transmission technology, but at the present time these are employed in a small minority of early Internet relationships.
* Listserv is a leading e-mail list-management program that facilitates the administration of various types of e-mail lists, such as discussion groups.
* I should perhaps confess to some bias on this subject, having lived with as many as four cats at the same time, all of whom slept on our bed, ate mounds of fish and chicken, and were whisked off to the vet at the slightest indication of illness. Sadly, Ginger, Muffin, and Smoky have all died fairly recently, aged between eighteen and nineteen (in human terms, ninety to ninety-five), and were duly cremated, their ashes lovingly scattered in the garden. Fred is still alive and well at the time of this writing.
* This is true not only in the case of pet owners. When I take my cat to the vet, she talks to the cat, referring to me as “Daddy.”
† This may not always be the reason for speaking motherese since it is also used in intimate adult relationships.
‡ The tradition that one can only understand the characteristics of any species by observations made in the natural (as opposed to experimental) context.
* At an August 2003 wedding in Settle, England, the couple’s Alsatian, Barney, was dressed in a bow tie for the occasion, and it goes without saying that he accompanied the newlyweds on their honeymoon.
† For example, as reported in the “people” section of the South Bend Tribune, October 2, 1979, page 2, and in Reader’s Digest, volume 116, February 1980, page 136.
‡ These are prices as of late 2005.
§ According to my calculation, that makes the cost of the T-shirt seventy-five dollars—a real bargain!
* The earliest attempts to use animals for therapeutic purposes appear to predate this by almost two centuries. In 1792, William Tuke and several other Quakers in York, England, established a retreat where the mentally ill could be cared for much more humanely than was usual in those days. Tuke’s idea was to provide farm animals for the patients to look after, believing that this activity would reduce the patients’ aggressive instincts and improve their discipline and self-control.
* What little research has been carried out with pets other than cats and dogs has been insufficient to demonstrate any comparable benefits.
† For the purposes of her experiment, she defined happiness as “a satisfaction with life and a general sense of well-being.”
* Equivalent to $1.2 billion U.S. at that time.
† In order to determine how close a pet owner feels to their pet, Headey employed a “closeness to pet” measure that averages the answers to four questions, in which the subjects were asked to say whether they agreed or disagreed with certain statements: (a) “I feel close to my pet”; (b) “When things go wrong, it is comforting to be with my pet”; (c) “Having a pet around when people visit me makes it easier to get into conversation and create a friendly atmosphere”; and (d) “I have sometimes got to know people and made friends through having pets.”
* Social support is a network of family, friends, colleagues, and other acquaintances to whom one can turn, whether in times of crisis or simply for fun and entertainment.
* With only a little license, Alan Turing’s famous test for intelligence in a computer can be summarized thus: If a computer appears to be intelligent, then we should accept that it is intelligent.
* See the section “Attachment and Love,” page 26.
* The Second Self was reprinted in 2005 in a “twentieth anniversary edition” with an update section added.
† A microprocessor is a single computer chip that performs the “thinking” function.
* Often called “security objects.”
† Winnicott presented this essay at a meeting of the British PsychoAnalytical Society in 1951, but it was not published until 1953.
* A highly proficient and enthusiastic computer programmer—a “virtuoso programmer,” to quote Sherry Turkle.
* See also the section “Attachment and Love,” page 26.
* The replicability of robots and one of its major implications are discussed in the section “Three Routes to Falling in Love with Robots,” page 127.