Jennifer Chowdhury demonstrates her Ph.D. thesis project at New York University, an interactive game called Intimate Controllers. A set of sensors embedded in underwear direct the action on a video game. Players touch each other to control the game.

Photo: Jennifer Chowdhury Editor's note: Some links in this story lead to adult material and are not suitable for viewing at work. All links of this nature will be noted with "NSFW" after them.

I've noticed a wonderful trend happening at universities these past few years: projects that integrate sex and technology in innovative ways to improve human health and well-being.

Students interested in how technology and sexuality fit together – who take technology's role in sexual development for granted – are naturally drawn to fields like interactive telecommunications, human-computer interaction and affective computing. It's a multidisciplinary movement that inspires collaboration among engineers, artists, psychologists and sociologists – and in these studies, sex comes first. Tech is merely a catalyst.

Because geeks make great lovers, you have to expect a certain level of practical interest in sex tech. And because this generation grew up with the internet and mobile devices and don't always distinguish between "virtual" and "real" life, they are comfortable with technology as a platform for both physical and emotional intimacy.

They also see value in something we don't generally associate with academia: play.

Jennifer Chowdhury attended the interactive telecommunications program at New York University, where her prototypes drew on her engineering training, her artistic aspirations and her sense of humor. Her master's thesis project, Intimate Controllers, is not explicitly sexual – but it's not something you would use with your sibling, either.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puZclY7kbrs

Intimate Controllers is a set of sensors embedded in underwear that direct the action on a video game. Rather than sit separately on the couch and jam fingers against small plastic buttons, players touch each other to control the game.

For her demo, Chowdhury made a video of herself and a partner playing Pong. He stands behind her with his hands near her shoulders, and she reaches back toward his hips. When he touches her left breast, the paddle moves to the left. The sensor in the right bra cup moves the Pong paddle to the right.

"I thought long and hard about how to present Intimate Controllers so it wouldn't be viewed as 'girls gone wild' + technology," she said in an e-mail. "It's nerve-racking enough to give your thesis talk. But imagine doing it and knowing your teachers and peers are about to see you in your underwear on screen."

Lighthearted and playful, the invention nevertheless has a serious side. With it, Jennifer acknowledges the seductive nature of video games and the deleterious effect a passion for games can have on relationships. Yet "stop gaming" is hardly a solution.

(It's like firemen. You can't fall in love with a fireman and then ask or demand that he stop fighting fires, even if your intentions are good. You can't fall in love with a gamer and expect him or her to give up gaming to spend more time with you.)

"Anything that gets a couple to spend more time with one another, or to experience each other in a new way, is good for a relationship," she says. "If a couple plays well together, they will probably do other things well together as well."

Intimate Controllers is not the first sex-tech development at NYU. The couple who invented the Talk2Me (NSFW) audio-responsive vibrator did so during their tenure with the interactive telecommunications department. After graduation, they took their development commercial.

The Talk2Me is as much a communications device as it is a sex toy. Unlike other audio vibrators, it doesn't have to be attached to an audio device; its receiver picks up sound from any source and transmits it wirelessly to the toy, which then splits the bass and treble signals apart to drive two motors.

Pretty sophisticated engineering for "just a toy."

As its name suggests, the Talk2Me is designed to facilitate verbal play – as you talk dirty or whisper sweet nothings, the toy responds. Like Intimate Controllers, the technology is subordinate to the relationship, a tool to bring you together and get you talking.

I can think of a number of scenarios in which this device could, ah, facilitate intimacy, but I'll have to leave it to your imagination. This is Wired, not Penthouse.

By now, some of you are thinking you should quit your jobs, take out loans and go back to school, if this is what the kids are doing these days. I can't argue with that – especially when some programs are testing sex tech's potential to save lives.

Paul Robert Appleby, research assistant professor of psychology at USC, has teamed up with Lynn Miller, professor at USC's Annenberg School of Communication, to study how effective interactive media can be in educating adults about safer sex practices.

The study uses an interactive DVD to take users on a virtual date. As they make choices – accept the drink, decline the drugs, negotiate the use of a condom – they receive feedback on their decisions.

"It's sexy, not X-rated but certainly NC-17, with simulated sex scenes shot from above the waist," says Appleby. "It is designed to get the participant at least mildly sexually aroused, the notion being if you learn a skill set in a particular affective state, you're more likely to use it later when you're in that situation."

Using the technology to arouse you and then require you to make a decision is a particularly clever way to teach smarter sex. It's the element that has always been missing from high school curriculum, even back when there was such a thing. Drill all you want on birth control and disease prevention – when a person is turned on and has the possibility of sex right there, they don't always remember or care.

The study's DVD uses actors, but Appleby anticipates an evolution to video games in the near future. "Games allow more possibilities in terms of how many choices the user will be able to make," he says. "One would expect you could get an even better result, one more tailored to the individual, with a video game."

So far, the tool seems to be working. Follow-up research shows participants practice safer sex after their USC session more consistently than they did before.

Not all academics are willing to embrace sex tech. University of Irvine Ph.D. student Amanda Williams, who arranged the sexuality track for the 2006 Computer-Human Interaction conference in Montreal, encountered a range of resistance and "what on earth for?" when she proposed the sessions.

But the sex-tech panel she moderated at this year's SXSW festival was greeted with overwhelming enthusiasm and taken seriously by organizers and attendees alike. I bet it won't be long before you'll be able to pursue a master's degree specifically in the technology of sex.

If only one didn't have study for the GRE.

See you next Friday,

Regina Lynn

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Regina Lynn never stops learning and loves being around genius – but is way too sane to consider graduate school. She blogs at reginalynn.com.

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