Technology is probably having some of the biggest impacts on the most basic form of human needs – sex and intimacy. It’s the glue that binds our families and relationships together.
The Future of Sex and Intimacy shows 4 videos that tackles this area. Victoria Cullen takes on a journey through the history of sex toys, The Drum has an extensive look at the industry, Karley Sciortino (Slutever) rides the VICE train through the weird world of dating apps, and Nikolas Badminton talks about the wider implications of tech on gender, identity, intimacy, and society.

Sex and tech – presented by Victoria Cullen at Real Big Things

Victoria takes us through how technology is ‘disrupting’ the way society thinks about, talks about and has sex.

The Big Turn On: The Future of Sex (The Drum)

Sex and tech are coming together. The implications for relationships, culture, and business could be revolutionary. The Drum’s documentary The Big Turn On looks at the field of sextech. Everything from VR porn, teledildonics and remote sex toys, hook-up apps like Tinder and Grindr, extramarital dating site Ashley Madison, and realworld sex platform Make Love Not Porn. The documentary includes interviews with business leaders, Cindy Gallop and Noel Biderman, and leading technology and sex journalists, Olivia Solon and Alix Fox. Welcome to the future of sex.

The Big Turn On has several forecasts for the coming years:

• VR technology will make adult entertainment far more immersive. A user can be part of sex scenes, both in the real world and invented fantasy realms. According to director Sam Scott, VR’s realism and illusion of intimacy will earn it many fans in the near future.
• Sex robots will soon have more realistic bodies and movements, plus artificial intelligence. An intelligent sex robot can form a relationship with users.
• “We want to normalize cyber sex,” said a spokesperson for Dutch teledildonics company Kiiroo, which uses moving rings in their products to create a highly realistic long-distance sexual experience. Kiiroo intends to work with webcam and online chat services to help connect sexual partners.
• Online dating apps are causing sociological changes. Hook-up culture will become more casual and the stigma will decrease. Apps like Tinder are already making the sex lives of its users into regular dinner conversation.
• We’re about to see education and knowledge transform how people have sex. Big data is already storing details about online service users and their sex lives, and this will continue. Today, sex app Spreadsheets records the user’s sex habits to give them detailed information about their sex life, such as time spent engaged in sex and highest decibels reached for cries of passion. As well as allegedly telling you how good you are in bed, Spreadsheets rates users by country and provides details of others’ sex lives.

The Mobile Love Industry (VICE)

In this episode of Love Industries we’ll look at the ways in which mobile apps have become an essential part of our search for the next hook-up, true love, and everything in between.
The smartphone has become the crucial link in modern relationships, it facilitates far more connections than real-world interaction ever allowed — from dating app geniuses who use data and game theory to hack the system, to the darker side of digital love, where app addiction runs rampant and users find themselves endlessly swiping in an empty search for more.
Karley Sciortino will take on the task of determining where the human search for love is headed in the 21st century. She’ll meet with the brains behind these dating apps and try each of the most promising apps out using her own love life as a testing ground.

From Now: Nikolas Badminton – Sex & the Singularity

A talk that looks at how we have come to a point when technology is inevitably changing the way we have and consume sex. It also looks at how things will (and must) change as we head to 2045 when artificial intelligence will have progressed to the point of a greater-than-human intelligence, radically changing civilization, and perhaps human nature.

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Nikolas Badminton is a world-respected futurist speaker that researches, speaks, and writes about the future of work, how technology is affecting the workplace, how workers are adapting, the sharing economy, and how the world is evolving. He appears at conferences in Canada, USA, UK, and Europe. Email him to book him for your radio, TV show, or conference.