From: tmaddox@milton.u.washington.edu (Tom Maddox)
Subject: Sex & Violence in VR
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1992 23:45:12 GMT
Message-ID: <1992Apr7.234512.8798@u.washington.edu>
Organization: The Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington


In article <31374@sdcc12.ucsd.edu> aamicone@sdcc13.ucsd.edu (Andrew Micone) writes:
>In article <1992Mar30.122146.1168@wkuvx1.bitnet> kinnema@wkuvx1.bitnet (Mark Kinney, Attorney at Chaos) writes:
>>In article <1992Mar27.174807.10501@news.unomaha.edu>, ACM023@Zeus.unomaha.edu (Ed Stastny ACMM) writes:
>>> Also, there was a sub-article (half a page) on "virtual sex" with a few
>>> Timothy Leary comments in it.
>>
>>An interesting note to tie in with the recent "VR porn" discussion here: It
>>seems (according to this article, anyway) that the organizations working on VR
>>are reluctant to talk about this aspect of it, for PR reasons. They did
>>acknoledge the possibility, though.
>
>I can't blame them, all this media hype about VR Porn is only
>hurting the serious research efforts in the field. Most VR research
>has been going on quietly for many years now in fields like medical
>imaging and improved interface technologies. Research grants are
>going to go to other fields if it's percieved that VR's ultimate
>goal is a virtual sex playground. That's not to say that it's not an
>interesting idea, I know there are some startups like PiR (Pleasure
>instruments Research) working on the hardware side of the problem.
>They too like to keep a low-profile, which I can understand since
>many of us might feel, er, uncomfortable knowing what sort of
>"research" might be going on next door...moral outrage might be a
>better term

	I find very amusing the notion that anyone would feel moral outrage 
about vr research going into virtual sex, given the equanimity with which 
AI and vr researchers in particular have taken military money.

	"Sure, I'm a serious researcher.  I do Death Machine Simulations--
no sex, no sirree because that would be *dirty*."

	In fact, those serious researchers will respond to institutional needs
(killing, commanding, controlling, for instance; healing also, to be sure), not
to our individual human ones, because institutions pay the freight on research.

	Folks out in the Gibsonian "Street," however, will undoubtedly put the
technologies thus developed to new and innaresting uses; as I've said, I believe
vr porn will be one of them.


-- 
				Tom Maddox
			tmaddox@u.washington.edu
		"Writing is reading and reading is writing."
				A. S. Byatt