Futuristic Sex Robotz. The idea of sex with robots isn’t new, it’s been around since some German boy fapped to the gynoid from Metropolis. Hajime Sorayama’s drawings have been fueling such fantasies since the 1970’s. And all the sci-fi movies, shows, comics, and animations since have given us glimpses into robotic futures. Now, the latest issue of Futures journal (V 44, I 4, May 2012) has an article that describes a fictional club in Amsterdam that caters to robo-fetishists in 2050.

Ian Yeoman and Michelle Mars of the University of Wellington’s Victoria Management School create a hypothetical robo-brothel not only to show how it can be possible, but to show how it can alter how the sex trade operates in Amsterdam, and potentially world-wide. The Futures journal is available for download from Science Direct, but it’s behind a paywall. I was hoping it would be shared by now, but fortunately io9 quotes a few paragraphs about the club, its services, and the advantages to meat-based bordellos.

Welcome to the Yub-Yum Club!

(from io9) The Yub-Yum is Amsterdam’s top sex club for business travellers located beside a 17th century canal house on the Singel. It is modern and gleaming with about 100 scantily clad blonde and brunettes parading around in exotic G-strings and lingerie. Entry costs s10,000 for an all inclusive service. The club offers a full range of sexual services from massages, lap dancing and intercourse in plush surroundings. The Yub-Yum is a unique bordello licensed by the city council, staffed not by humans but by androids. This situation came about due to an increase in human trafficking in the sex industry in the 2040s which was becoming unsustainable, combined with an increase in incurable STI’s in the city especially HIV which over the last decade has mutated and is resistant to many vaccines and preventive medicines.
…
The Yub-Yum offers a range of sexual gods and goddesses of different ethnicities, body shapes, ages, languages and sexual features.
…
The most popular model is Irina, a tall, blonde, Russian exotic species who is popular with Middle Eastern businessmen. The tourists who use the services of Yub-Yum are guaranteed a wonderful and thrilling experience, as all the androids are programmed to perform every service and satisfy every desire. All androids are made of bacteria resistant fibre and are flushed for human fluids, therefore guaranteeing no Sexual Transmitted Disease’s are transferred between consumers. The impact of Yub-Yum club and similar establishments in Amsterdam has transformed the sex industry alleviating all health and human trafficking problems. The only social issues surrounding the club is the resistance from human sex workers who say they can’t compete on price and quality, therefore forcing many of them to close their shop windows. All in all, the regeneration of Amsterdam’s sex industry has been about the success of the new breed of sex worker. Even clients feel guilt free as they actually haven’t had sex with a real person and therefore don’t have to lie to their partner.

Sounds like fun, but that 10K price tag may force many back to the meat-houses which may sustain the trafficking and diseases, or unlicensed robo-bordellos where the sexbots may not be as “clean” as hoped. And let us not forget about robot rights becoming the new civil-rights battlefield.

The concept is still about forty years away, but sex robots are already here…

Sex Robots now available for your enjoyment.

Source: TrueCompanion.com, Phys.org

I originally blogged this a couple of years ago, only for spammers to ruin it before any mirroring or archiving could be done. So here’s take two…

Roxxxy TrueCompanion is a sex robot that debuted at the 2010 Adult Entertainment Expo by Douglas Hines. She can be purchased at the TrueCompanion website (where a male version, Rocky) for $1,000 US (actually less right now, she’s on sale). She has an articulated skeleton, though it cannot move by itself, the proper “ports,” and even options for skin/hair/eye color. She also comes with five personalities that range from wild to frigid. The idea for the personalities came from the September 11 attacks:

“I had a friend who passed away in 9/11,” Hines said. “I promised myself I would create a program to store his personality, and that became the foundation for Roxxxy True Companion.”

That was two years ago, and this video shows a rather unusual… um, “bug”… that resulted from that personality. Hopefully it’s been corrected since then, otherwise….

Source: Life’s Little Mysteries

Hollywood Hype. The nightmare of robots usurping humanity has become a staple of science fiction. But have you ever thought if such a scene is possible? Life’s Little Mysteries, the website dedicated to answering some of the more unusual tech questions, gives their opinion about the possibility of “robopocalypse.”

Even the experts seem divided. They believe man and machine will get along, but that relation can turn sour under the right conditions.

“The technology already exists to build a system that will destroy the whole world, intentionally or unintentionally, if it just detects the right conditions,” said Shlomo Zilberstein, a professor of computer science at the University of Massachusetts.

Military (Un)Intelligence. One scenario can be summed up in one word: Skynet. We have the technology to create it, so why not?

Nukes.

Currently, Predator drones in the Middle East have been getting more and more autonomy, more ability to make its own decision to attack a target. Even so, live humans still monitor its operation and can override the drone if needed. When humans tried to shut down Skynet, even the “allies” were determined to be “enemies” and let the nukes fly. The game plan to keep that from happening is to limit what weapons it has access to, and to limit its functionality to specific situations.

That wouldn’t preclude the possibility of a robotic arms race, leading to both sides loosing control of their machines…

Revolution through evolution. Another scenario of mechanized takeover is not as violent as nuclear war; Humanity simply replaces itself part-by-part, shedding the meat in favor of metal. There would be some resistors (sic), but they’ll be allowed to die out by themselves.

Of course, someone… or something… needs to build those robots. With robots building cars, planes, etc., it won’t be to hard to imagine that robots can build robots, if they’re not doing it already. But when robots not only build robots, but run the whole factory, and possibly the whole infrastructure that humans also rely on, things can get real sticky real fast.

Busted, Plausible, or Confirmed? It would seem that humanity is teetering on the edge of robopocalypse, yet it is something that is easily avoidable:

Overall, a bit of wisdom would prevent humankind from falling into the traps dreamed up by Hollywood screenwriters. But the profit motive at companies has certainly engendered more automation, and the Cold War’s predication on the threat of mutually assured destruction points out that rationality does not always win.

LMM gives a score of 2 out of 4 “rocketboys.” If it was MythBusters, this would be called “Plausible.”

Military leaders and corporations probably will not be so stupid as to add high levels of programmed autonomy to catastrophically strong weapon systems and critical industrial sectors.

Given the levels of stupidity that military and corporations like to show, I’d say this is more than plausible.

Damn, two and a half months without posting… not good, especially for controlling spam. Well, to let you know that I haven’t totally forgotten what I’m supposed to be doing here (despite my growing laziness), here’s a video for the latest Christmas jingle originally found on The Huffington Post.

Since we’re being so festive(us), here’s another holiday classic from Johnathan “Code Monkey” Coulton.

Enjoy the holidays… WHILE YOU CAN!

Source: io9, and a few other places.

Cyberpunk is no longer the future. We’re living in an age in which many of the visions of creators like Bruce Sterling, William Gibson, Pat Cadigan and Ridley Scott are invading our world today. (Opening paragraph from io9 article)

But you already knew that. Right?

We’ve been following the technologies and events that show how we are rapidly advancing to a cyberpunk world, even if some of it is by accident. Hacker wars, cybernetics, the Internet, megacorps, … these are now part of everyday life. And io9 is looking for places in America that show the country hasn’t devolved into an ultra-conservative tea-fag-party run by brainless rape magnets. There are people who do read Gibson and Sterling, opting to use Ayn Rand for kindling for their oil-barrel fires. While other cities of the world have already made such the conversion, and inspired the cyberpunk vision, io9 wants America to join the party, whether it’s a private hackspace or a major metropolitan sprawl fulfilling the cyberpunk prophecy.

From theory to practice. The sudden interest in finding cyberpunk places can be traced to an essay, Cyberpunk Cities: Science Fiction Meets Urban Theory by Carl Abott that was published in 2007. You can download the essay from here via the Pasta & Vinegar blog. P&V found the essay interesting, but this particular paragraph caught his attention:

Because the cyberpunk subgenre draws on ideas that ascribe power to technological change and global capitalism as all-encompassing forces, it offers relatively little direct guidance for planners. However, it does suggest the need for flexibility, for seeing plans as reflexive processes intended as frameworks for responding to inherent instability. It also suggests the value of creating opportunities for spontaneous and informal social institutions by loosening building codes, preserving low-rent commercial spaces, and making information infrastructures as ubiquitous and cheap as possible.

In other words, planning should be less like “planning” and more like “adapting”. Are there any places that are like that in America?

Yep…

Vegas, baby! You want to focus on the underground? Las Vegas would be the place to start. Beneath the glitz and glamor of the strip…

… lies a very different reality of Vegas.

More pics like these can be found on the Place Hacking urban exploration blog, where they find not only a moment of clarity regarding their activities, but an underground economy that could very well be the definition of cyberpunkness:

Given that our crew has now started squatting space in London, are we really all that different? And if we are bridging the gap between urban explorers and hobos, tramps and bums, following Anderson, what are we? Does that dreaded monstrosity the prohobo – the hobo that chooses to be homeless yet retains the ability to photograph, blog and scam the internet for money as well as picking pockets and robbing Liddle for fixtures to BBQ vegetables looted from the skip actually exist? Is this Donna Haraway’s cyborg, neither nature nor culture, human nor computer, neither employed nor homeless? Are we becoming as liminal as the spaces we increasingly reside in? Are we finally getting close to the meld? I hope so, cause I can’t wait to pop.

OmniCorp Detroit. (Official OCD website/blog) The former Motor City has been one of the U.S.A.’s most cyberpunk cities for some time now.

OCD is best described as a group of artisans and tinkerers who are into, as they put it, making, breaking, reshaping and hacking all sorts of things! They hold events like Maker Faires and Open Hack Nights. Sound like the kind of group that could be helpful in an urban wasteland.

Microsoft’s House of the Future. Touch-top tables? Refrigerators that can order food when you run low? A hot tub with an underwater music system?

A full-size model already exists, complete with digital devices for walls and tabletops in the kitchen and living room. It’s the kind of pad that only corporate-type cyberpunks - like Bill Gates - can afford. Dare to dream.

Other points of interest. Some other spots include a hackerspace in New York City, a latino art gallery in San Francisco, and a converted Los Angeles warehouse.

Think you know of a place that qualifies? Shoot an email to tips@io9.com, and if it does, it just might appear in io9’s next issue of The Most Cyberpunk Places in the U.S.A.

Source: DemandProgress.org via Boing Boing.

Congratulations, America! You have become the enemy you fight.

America always seems to cringe when other nations try some form of mass-censorship, but the MPAA wants it to happen. Bill S.3804, aka the “Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act” (COICA) is their latest scam to seize control of the Internet in the name of “stopping piracy.”

The “Bill” is currently “in committee,” meaning that some congressional members are reviewing the “Bill” to see if it is something that can easily pass, if some tweaking is necessary, or if it should be dumped altogether. If you want to see this “Bill” for yourself (you need some bathroom material or a cure for insomnia) you can find the full text on GovTrack.us where you can also track its progress.

Many bills do die in committee, so the odds are against this one surviving. But if it does survive and becomes law…

The Great Firewall of America. Demand Progress’ site has a fact sheet about what the bill purportedly does:

The bill creates two blacklists of Internet domain names. The first can be added to by a court, the second by the Attorney General. Internet service providers (everyone from Comcast to PayPal to Google AdSense) would be required to block any domains on the first list. They would also receive immunity (and presumably the government’s gratitude) for blocking domains on the second list.

Which sites would be tagets? Anyone “dedicated to infringing activity.” But read on…

Well, it means sites like YouTube could get censored in the US. Copyright holders like Viacom argue that copyrighted material is central to activity of YouTube. But under current US law, YouTube is perfectly legal as long as they take down copyrighted material when they’re informed about it — which is why Viacom lost their case in court. If this bill passes, Viacom doesn’t even need to prove YouTube is doing anything illegal — as long as they can persuade a court that enough other people are using it for copyright infringement, that’s enough to get the whole site censored.

And even without a court order, sites can get blacklisted just by order of the Attorney General — and the bill encourages ISPs to block those sites as well. ISPs have plenty of reason to obey a government blacklist even when they’re not legally required.

The US Constitution says that we’re supposed to have “due process” in the courts before a site gets its plug pulled, but in our post-9/11 security-surveillance state, due process can now be bypassed and a site can be shut down even though it never did anything wrong. If a person has a problem with a website, all they need to do is complain and … 404: Site not found. Imagine WikiLeaks, or even our own Cyberpunk Review site, being on someone’s shit-list. WikiLeaks can be considered a site “dedicated to infringing activity,” and Cyberpunk Review’s media and news about a genre that is inherently anarchistic and criminal in nature…

History Never Repeats… unless they didn’t study. I remember hearing something about Australia’s attempt at blacklist censorship failing. If someone down under can let us know what the status of that attempt. In the mean time, US citizens can sign an online petition to help stop S.3804.

Better still, let’s try this: Find out the congress-critters supporting this “bill” and the members of the MPAA and follow them around in speaker-packed cars or large boom-boxes set to continuously play FSR’s “Fuck the MPAA” to get our message across.

To be honest, I don’t think any of those corporate whores will ever get the message unless they’re raped in public.

Source: New York Times

“G” as in God? Whether you found it online yesterday (31-Aug-2010) or in today’s dead tree edition (or just hearing about it now), cyberpunk’s godfather William Gibson gives his op-ed about Google’s want of playing god in telling us what to do.

OK, it’s not because of Google’s want of telling us what to do, but the apparent need of anyone who uses the big “G” to decide what they want to do. Those who use G’s services actually contribute to the search giant’s ability to make decisions for us. Gibson likens G to a genie that can grant our wishes:

We would all very much like to be sagely and reliably advised by our own private genie; we would like the genie to make the world more transparent, more easily navigable. Google does that for us: it makes everything in the world accessible to everyone, and everyone accessible to the world.

Of course, the “everyone accessible to the world” part is what some balk at as we find our personal information being more and more exposed online.

The inmates run the prison. The idea of Google being a sort of panopticon prison, with G as the proverbial omnipotent warden and us as the inmates, but Gibson argues that is only half-true:

In Google, we are at once the surveilled and the individual retinal cells of the surveillant, however many millions of us, constantly if unconsciously participatory. We are part of a post-geographical, post-national super-state, one that handily says no to China. Or yes, depending on profit considerations and strategy. But we do not participate in Google on that level. We’re citizens, but without rights.

As said before, it’s the people who use Google’s services who actually contribute to the building of the panopticon, and the real problem comes in when those people (over)expose themselves on social network sites. Gibson sees possibilities in a fake identity industry for such carelessness since Google doesn’t seem interested in protecting users from their own stupidity.

Don’t blame the government. It would be easy to do so IF the advances in technology wasn’t so quick. But when the only law Google follows is Moore’s Law, technology will always stomp a mud hole in legislation’s face and walk it dry:

We also seldom imagined (in spite of ample evidence) that emergent technologies would leave legislation in the dust, yet they do. In a world characterized by technologically driven change, we necessarily legislate after the fact, perpetually scrambling to catch up, while the core architectures of the future, increasingly, are erected by entities like Google.

Then again, Google is “a very large and powerful corporation to boot.” Too big to fail, and far too big to give a fuck.

Source: Paul Buchheit’s Blog

A familiar storyline? Computer programming genius Paul Buchheit has his own blog (who doesn’t these days?), and while most of his posts have been geared to the techno-geeks, a post from last week has a certain, eerily familiar ring to it:

Sometimes we catch a glimpse of the truth, and discover the actual rules of a system. Once the actual rules are known, it may be possible to perform “miracles” — things which violate the perceived rules.

Shortcuts and Loopholes. Paul describes how he feels that hacking fits this description of violating perceived rules, and gives his work with AdSense as an example. Hacking these days goes beyond the computer:

Hacking isn’t limited to computers though. Wherever there are systems, there is the potential for hacking, and there are systems everywhere. Our entire reality is systems of systems, all the way down.

This hacking of systems results from a certain mindset… the “hacker mindset”… that breaks from the “straight and narrow” path in favor of “shortcuts and loopholes”; That there are always undiscovered areas of opportunity, and those who can exploit them become incredibly successful at the expense of others (an old obsolete system or innocent victims). Of course, these hacks can result in a vast improvement of something (Google’s rise as the predominant search engine) or an apocalyptic failure (bailouts).

Hack the future. Most don’t bother about finding the truth or even care if someone else does. Some people are content with just finding the truth about reality, but hackers try to bend that truth to see if it breaks or if it holds up. Those are the people, Paul says, who will make the future for us:

To discover great hacks, we must always be searching for the true nature of our reality, while acknowledging that we do not currently possess the truth, and never will. Hacking is much bigger and more important than clever bits of code in a computer — it’s how we create the future.

If you’re into Tetsuo and Machine Girl, have I got a treat for you; A trailer for the upcoming movie RoboGeisha, due to hit theaters this fall… at least in Japan… hopefully for the rest of the world as well. There’s already a RoboGeisha website to browse. Not much there for now, but bookmark it as new info will become available in the near future.

I’m not going to try to explain this, as there’s not much info available for now. All I can say is, watch at your own peril… and use some eye bleach if needed. Meanwhile, I’m going to look for Machine Girl and Tetsuo 2 to review. Enjoy!

Sources: NewScientist, Web Science Research Initiative

The Web is God? When Tim Berners-Lee first created what would be the foundations for the Web (not the Net, WEB. Let’s get our usage right.), he could not have predicted the explosive growth seen in the 1990s through today. In fact, the Web is now so ingrained into our cultures that humanity is practically fused to it. This fusion is causing its own problems.

That is giving Berners-Lee some cause for alarm. To study the effects that the Web is now having on humanity, he has founded the Web Science Research Initiative and came up with the term Web Science to describe what the WSRI is studying:

When we discuss an agenda for a science of the Web, we use the term “science” in two ways. Physical and biological science analyzes the natural world, and tries to find microscopic laws that, extrapolated to the macroscopic realm, would generate the behavior observed. Computer science, by contrast, though partly analytic, is principally synthetic: It is concerned with the construction of new languages and algorithms in order to produce novel desired computer behaviors. Web science is a combination of these two features. The Web is an engineered space created through formally specified languages and protocols. However, because humans are the creators of Web pages and links between them, their interactions form emergent patterns in the Web at a macroscopic scale. These human interactions are, in turn, governed by social conventions and laws. Web science, therefore, must be inherently interdisciplinary; its goal is to both understand the growth of the Web and to create approaches that allow new powerful and more beneficial patterns to occur.

Weird Science, or necessary discipline?

(From NewScientist) How does understanding these emergent systems affect society?

Because if you get it right, you can create a new social phenomenon that changes how people operate. Take designing an online market for second-hand goods: if you get the website’s balance of social and technical wrong, or mess up its trust and reputation model, it won’t work. But if you get it right, you create a market for used goods internationally that can affect the price of products around the world because it provides the price of the second-hand alternative. It is a web phenomenon that changed the way society works, and we need a science to understand it.

Web Science sounds like something that people who work with the Web need to know, not just for designing sites, but for security and privacy as well. But is it something worth getting a PhD for? The biggest test will be when… or if… they are able to but the science into actual use for everyday people. Remember: In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.