Saturday, December 15, 2007

Robo-Love Will Change our Evolutionary Tastes?

John "Accelerating Evolution" Hawks has a great piece on how robots will succeed actual humans in the next half-century, as Honda and other Japanese firms speed up the technology.
I've been telling people this week that there is some sense to which the evolutionary future will be determined by the cultural impact of technological changes -- genetic engineering being the most prominent example.

Now comes this:

[T]here will soon come a day when people fall in love with robots and want them for companions, friends, love objects and possibly even partners for sex and marriage.

That day is imminent, [writer David] Levy writes, especially the sex part. By the middle of this century, he predicts, "love with robots will be as normal as love with other humans, while the number of sexual acts and lovemaking positions commonly practiced between humans will be extended, as robots teach more than is in all of the world’s published sex manuals combined."


Well, that's one more thing, isn't it? If you're more likely to fall in love with a robot, will you be less likely to have children? And if so, will that mean that over many generations, robot-revulsion genes will be selected?

I'll tell you what, if they make Haley Joel Osment-looking robot children, I'm already revulsed!

Or the Ashley Olson duo! You can have anorexic, bulemic, or even buff chiseled robots, but I'm sticking with flesh-and-blood Jessica Simpson clones!