Infuriating Technology (or, Crisis at the Craft Store) (or, Giselle Needs Professional Help)

by Giselle Renarde

I'm much more patient than I used to be. Much less irritable, too.

But something happened earlier in the week that really set me off: my computer started acting up.  Maybe you can relate.  There's something about electronic devices not doing what they're supposed to do that's absolutely maddening.

I can handle a lot of intense stuff pretty calmly.  I have certification (albeit lapsed) in crisis prevention and intervention. Does that mean I never have out-of-control moments myself? Nope. I had one just a couple days ago. We'll get to that.

Last week I was at Michael's (the craft store) when a man burst through the door screaming and swearing.  Customers RAN from this person, who was obviously in crisis and perhaps has mental health issues.  While he screamed that he'd lost his towel and he was having a very bad day, a staff member asked if she could help him. She spoke clearly and casually, without a hint of fear and without that demeaning therapist voice people sometimes use when they don't know what they're doing.

The man asked for a product the store didn't carry (not a towel, by the way).  The staff member made a suggestion about where he might find it, which inflamed the man because he'd already been there.  He shouted about all the stores he'd visited. Nobody had what he needed.

The staff member listened without rushing him or interrupting. She eventually suggested a store he hadn't tried, and he left without escalation. The situation was handled extremely well. When you're speaking with a person in crisis, things can go really bad really fast. Here, they didn't.

Around the same time, my computer started acting up. Slowing down. Not responding.

Annoying, right?  I'm no expert, but I couldn't figure out what the problem was. I started running scans. Scan after scan after scan.  Nothing seemed to be working. The solutions I implemented to resolve my possible problems only exacerbated them.

I can't remember exactly what set me off.  After five days of getting zero work done because all my energy was going into resolving this issue, I had a bit of a mental health event myself.  The helplessness of not being able to fix my stupid little problem culminated in an explosion of screaming, swearing, crying, rocking, and punching myself in the head (a new one, for me). I'd lost my towel. I was having a very bad day.

It was a true crisis moment, brought on by... computer problems?

When I was a teenager, I remember a teacher trying to warn me off my ex because he'd once kicked the crap out of a photocopier.

There's something about technology.  It brings out my inner rage in a way humans never can.  I used to have a printer that could provoke similar reactions, though never as intense as this event. This was a bad one. I've never hit myself before. That was new and painful and actually pretty scary.

My computer's still not working properly. Mostly, programs randomly choose not to respond for reasons that remain a mystery. When this happens, I get up and walk away and do something else for a minute.  I know I have to take a breath and distract myself or risk another meltdown.

A close friend suggested seeking professional help, meaning an IT person. That made me laugh, because when my girlfriend made that same suggestion she was talking about a healthcare professional.

I think they're both right.

The Erotogeek Speaks

By Lisabet Sarai

Like many of my generation, I have a love/hate relationship with technology. I'm a geek. I'm a Luddite. I'm definitely not "wired".

I make my living working with computers, designing and writing software, and teaching other to do the same. This isn't the career for which my extensive education supposedly prepared me, but the after burning out in that field, I discovered, almost by accident, that software is magic. Shazzam! You begin with nothing but abstract concepts, yet the finished product profoundly affects the real world – controlling airplanes, monitoring vital signs, fighting environmental degradation, connecting people in disparate parts of the globe.

In a way, programming is like writing. You begin with ideas but end up with an artifact that can move people to tears or stimulate them to the point of orgasm....

Anyway, back to technology. My knowledge and skills are pretty useful tools for an author, at least these days. For instance, back in 2006, before EchoSign and other on-line contract sites existed, I wrote a web script that let the forty plus contributors to Cream: The Best of the Erotica Readers and Writers Association create customized contracts they could print out, sign and return. I maintain my own website, coding the HTML by hand. This saves time, aggravation and of course money, when I want to do an update. I have tools for managing and resizing images and can make rudimentary covers (though I'm a total novice when it comes to Photoshop). I can turn a spreadsheet of reader information into a mailing list in ten minutes. I even understand (more or less!) how to make Blogger do what I want (most of the time).

Given this apparent sophistication, it may surprise you to learn that I don't own a smart phone. I don't use Facebook for marketing. I don't Tweet. I finally got a laptop with a web cam, at the insistent urging of my siblings, but I still haven't gotten Skype video to work correctly.

I read ebooks in PDF format on a cheap seven inch tablet that doesn't even have the ability to connect to the wireless Internet. I don't play computer games (other than an occasional guilty round of Fruit Ninja!) I still write personal letters long hand. When it comes to technology, I am definitely not on the bleeding edge.

Part of my reluctance to get involved with the latest gadgets and online fads is financial. I can't afford to carry around a device worth five hundred smackers, given my propensity for being absent minded. I'd lose the darn thing in a week – if I didn't drop it into the toilet! Another factor is time. As you might have noticed, whenever you add a new electronic tool or toy to your arsenal, you end up spending hours, days or even weeks learning to use it, customizing it to your needs, and (in some cases) trying to make it function at all.

On top of all these practical factors, though, I have a deep mistrust of technology. You know what they say about people who work in restaurants: when you know what goes into the food, you lose your appetite. I know from first hand experience how messed up software can be. Even with the best intentions and the best management, it's not possible to write bug-free programs. In the real world, software is written by teams under tremendous pressure to get their product to market. They're forced to cut corners and take shortcuts to meet their deadlines.

Meanwhile, it's all too clear to me that all the supposed technological advances and exciting new trends are driven primarily by the profit motive. Social networks do not exist to connect you with your friends and loved ones. Their primary raison d'être is to sell advertising and make sure you see it, with the secondary goal of gathering as much personal information about you as possible. Sure, e-commerce is convenient for customers, but most importantly it allows sellers to cut their costs, reduce the amount of required staff, and capitalize on impulse buying, based on the data they collect about your history and preferences. Google Maps? Sure, it's fantastic to be able to look up the route to someplace you've never been (though I've found dozens of location errors in my own searches), but you'll have to screen out all the irrelevant commercial entities who've bought listings.

Then there are the true criminals – hackers and gangsters who profit by stealing your personal information and selling it to the highest bidder. Viruses, worms, trojan horses, botnets, spam, adware, key loggers, network sniffers, password crackers, phishing.... It's downright scary. Have you heard about the virus that locks up your computer until you pay a ransom? Creative, I must admit. But honestly, these days you have to be more careful venturing out onto the Internet than you do having sex. Too bad there are no condoms for web browsing.

But back to the topic...

It's an unfortunate truth that if you're an author, and you have any interest at all in selling your work, you can't hide from technology. There are many potentially useful blogs and articles about how to use modern media to market your books. Believe them or not, as you choose. It's far more difficult to find straightforward, readable explanations about how computer and internet technology works, with enough background to help you weigh the benefits and risks of different approaches.

Here's where the Erotogeek – my alter-ego – comes in. I've written a book on this topic, called Naughty Bits: The Erotogeek's Guide for the TechnologicallyChallenged Author. You can download it, absolutely free, by clicking on the link above. The book is a compilation of a year of columns I did for the Erotica Readers and Writers Association. It's full of examples as well as my admittedly jaundiced opinions about technology hype.

Reading Naughty Bits may help you deal with your own technical conundrums. However, it will also make my personal ambivalent feelings about technology abundantly clear.

Love, Sex and Artificial Intelligence

by Thomas "cmdln" Gideon

I love my computer. I'll admit it. Does that mean I have a deep, meaningful relationship with it? Not so much. I like to think that I've gotten beyond a mere techno fetish into deeper considerations of how programmable, general-purposes computers are able to help us create beauty, discover meaning, and effect change.

Sure, it started more with a fascination for form and style rather than any sort of substance. My relationship with my computer, and computing in general, has taken time to evolve.

I guess it isn't so different from the emotional relationships that characterize my rich social life as a human being. For those intriguing similarities, though, the notion of an intimate relationship with any kind of artificial construct still strikes me as preposterous.

Why is that?

Moore's law, which describes the acceleration of raw computing power as a function of transistor density on a chip, has some researchers in machine intelligence drooling over finally achieving comparable raw computing power to that housed in our humble brain pans. Recent specialization in this field of research has shown promise on the necessary software to transform brute gigaflops into something approaching general intelligence. Despite the constant promise of artificial intelligence being just beyond the horizon for the past few decades, it actually does seem like we may hit a tipping point within our lifetime.

I still cannot see having an emotionally fulfilling relationship with a synthetic being. There are more optimistic researchers betting that intentionally and craftily inspiring emotional connections will form a valuable part of the repertoire of human-machine interaction in future systems, computational and robotic.

Donald Norman's latest book, Emotional Design, Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things, goes beyond his earlier efforts in understanding the rational basis for design. He explores how emotion can override reason and lead us to making irrational but inwardly satisfying decisions. His work and others in the same vein suggest value in exploiting that phenomenon to ease the frustrations many users encounter in existing hardware and software designs. It is not that emotionally designed products are better but they consciously tug at our inner chords to get us to put up with their other less endearing quirks.

That's a bit cynical but you can see the optimistic scenario easily enough. Couple thoughtful, rational design with compassionate emotional design and the potential boggles the mind. Not only would you get greater effectiveness or productivity, but you'd feel good as you used the tools that made those improvements possible.

MIT has been exploring these threads of social technology for quite a bit longer, most notably with the Kismet project. Little more than a robotic caricature of a face, Kismet and its researchers seek to discover some of the core components of our emotional interactions. To hear the researchers talk about Kismet, the results are surprising and compelling.

When presented with a noisy information channel, the human mind is adept at filling in the blanks. We have apparently evolved considerable neural machinery to pull off this feat. In emotional interactions, we may have similar but less well understood abilities. We want to project and fill in the emotional gaps even in the most rudimentary systems.

More recently, tweenbot explored similar social interactions with an equally minimalistic construct. Norman, Kismet and tweenbot suggest that a simulacrum doesn't have to be pitch perfect for us to form an emotional connection.

Of course, if the appeal is made to even baser instincts, there appears to be even more latitude. Well before the media rich web, enthusiasts of the form flooded Usenet groups with strings of seemingly random characters that with the right arcane invocations could be transformed into prurient images to suit all tastes. At the risk of understating things, technology and the sex industry have a long and storied relationship. Many folks have already suggested that key technology innovations, such as the DVD format and high quality video codecs for online distribution, are the direct result of our monkey sex drives.

Sex and technology is a whole other topic to explore. No doubt there is plenty of research comparable to the emotional technology writings and projects I have cited. We, as a species, don't seem to have a problem with emotionally connecting with our technology nor do we collectively blink an eyelash at its increasing role in the development of our sexual natures.

I remain skeptical and my objection really crystallized when Helen Madden expressed a simple idea on a panel on which we both participated at a recent science fiction convention.

What if your sex toy could say no?

It would be easy to devolve from that simple question into some pretty heavy and potentially disturbing psycho-analysis. Or to be flip and dismissive. At that moment, in the context of a discussion of love, sex and artificial intelligence, it really captured a latent but necessary leg to the tripod of a satisfying relationship. I've discussed emotional connection and intimacy but I think these aren't able to get past technologically-mediated self-gratification without some degree of agency, of free will.

It seems so obvious in retrospect. It also represents a largely unspoken holy grail of artificial intelligence. When discussing our relationships with other social animals, we completely take it for granted. It isn't even worth mentioning.

In the context of a relationship with a constructed being, it is critical because we haven't been able to instill true agency into any of our creations as of yet. We are not even sure how to measure it, to know when we truly have achieved it. However, it is only when our creations are capable of evolving beyond their programming, to follow independently derived desires, to say no to us, that they achieve equal footing with the other social agents available to us. Only when there is the risk of rejection is there a sense of satisfaction in successfully developing a healthy emotional, even intimate, relationship, regardless of whether the agent's programming executes in flesh or in silicon.

*********************

Thomas "cmdln" Gideon is a self-described hacker, curmudgeon and hacktivist who ponders the intersection of technology and society on his twice weekly program, The Command Line Podcast, which can be found at http://thecommandline.net/. A student of The Hacker Ethic, he is particular fascinated by its contentions that computers can be used to create beauty and that they have the potential to effect positive social change. He follows a number of related topics of interest such as the creation and distribution of social media as a form of peer production, the future of computing both as realized in its physical architecture and the ways we program these forthcoming systems, and how computing relates to our own astonishing capacity for reasoning.

His interest in artificial intelligence combined with his habit of speaking at science fiction conventions led to his being a co-panelist with Helen Madden contemplating the intersection of social relationships, intimacy and machine minds.



Love, Sex and Artificial Intelligence by Thomas "cmdln" Gideon is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Based on a work at thecommandline.net.

Helen Makes A Porno

By Helen E. H. Madden

Actually, I've made TWO pornos, and by making I mean I wrote, directed, and animated two dirty flicks. Yes, that's right, animated. Remember, I have many talents, and one of them is cartooning.

Sometime around 1999, the Hubster bought me a program called Flash, which you may have heard of. Flash was a simple, yet very flexible, 2D animation program priced just right for the amateur cartoonist. It was simple to use, and even allowed for the addition of audio clips and a soundtrack to work with the animation. In fact, my copy of Flash came with a simple music looping program called Acid Pro 3. The idea behind Acid was that you picked out various clips of music and placed them into stack on the screen where you could arrange them with the click of a mouse. The looping part meant that the sounds would play over and over for as many repetitions as you liked, thus allowing for seamless music creation. And it came with a library of music clips to experiment with. It was an ideal program for someone like me who has an ear for music, but doesn't really play a musical instrument.

I mention all of this because the late 1990s was about the time that the multimedia computer craze swept through the world. Anybody who had a couple hundred dollars and a decent computer suddenly had the ability to create short films, animated cartoons, or even computer games. About the same time that Flash and Acid Pro came out, other inexpensive programs like Bryce (a program that let users create 3D landscapes) and Poser (used for 3D rendering and animation of human figures) appeared on the scene as well, opening up the previously out-of-reach world of 3D art to would-be digital artists.

Now let me ask you, what do you think a lot of folks did with all those simple, affordable programs? Did they create great works of art? Did they astound the world with their imaginative genius?

Well, maybe some folks did, but the rest of us created porn.

That's right, we suddenly got the capabilities of Industrial Light and Magic on our desktops and we make porn. A lot of porn.

I blame this on Poser. You see, Poser came complete with adult male and female figures. Nude adult male and female figures. You and I both know you can't just hand people a program that allows them to pose and manipulate naked 3D people and not expect something naughty to happen. I mean, come on! It was like having digital Barbie dolls to play with, only Ken came with genitalia. If you wanted him to, that is. Pose did have the option of letting you turn off his private bits and thus make the disappear (and please feel free to insert any obvious pun that you like right here).

There were other things you could do, too. In a classic case of sex driving technology, a lot of enterprising artists took the programs apart and figured out how to do things like resize and reshape 3D breasts and buttocks, apply lacy digital lingerie to these now enhanced virtual bodies, animate a variety of sexual positions, and even create sex toys in other 3D programs for additional pornographic fun. A few geniuses, disappointed with the original genitalia that came with Poser's 3D figures, made new and improved body parts that sold like mad. Yours truly bought a digital dick for her thirty-second birthday and spent many months experimenting with that little joy.

What became known as Poser porn offered endless deviant possibilities. Because the characters were digital, they could hold any pose in any environment. They could endure any extreme of BDSM. The artist had complete control over what he or she created. No longer did a person have to surf the web looking for just the right image to satisfy a visual need. You could make it, right there on your computer. An online society called Renderotica soon sprang up. Over the years it has become home to thousands upon thousands of dirty digital images.

I have certainly made some Poser porn in my time, and I've happily invested quite a bit of money into software and 3D figures to improve my efforts. The better quality images have a home on my website. As an artist, I strive to create images that don't look 3D even though they are created with 3D programs. I am getting better at it. But I still think the finest digital porn I ever made was in those early days when I first played around with Flash. Just some simple frame-by-frame animation with primitive characters and a cheesy looping soundtrack, but it certainly had its charms. Here, see for yourselves.

Stick Figure Porno 1

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Stick Figure Porno 2

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Classic Leather Techology

By Kim Dare.

I have to admit that sexual technology isn't one of the things that rocks my boat. Well, not current technology anyway.

If I'm looking for a toy, I'm drawn to something that's more likely to be constructed by a blacksmith than a computer expert. Or perhaps something that could only be fashioned by a very talented leather worker.

Toys need to have an emotional impact if I'm going to consider them worth while. They need to enhance the connection that exists between the humans involved in the scene.

Computer chips might not rock my boat, so I thought I would share with you a few things that were the hight of modern technology once upon a time.

Fast forward to the present day and they're not so much a modern innovation as classic.

Take this collar for instance.

A bit of metal, a bit of leather, a touch of craftsmanship and not a bit of electrical wire in sight. And, for me at least, it's pretty perfect.

I have no objection to technology in every day life. I'd be lost without my laptop. If I had to go back to pen and paper, I'd cry - not least because I'm dyslexic and I can't spell unless I'm working on a keyboard.

But when it comes to sex, in real life or the stories I write, I'm quickly bored with overly complicated gagets.

I don't mind the occasional addition of a vibrating whatever. (I'm back to talking about my characters in my books here. My private life I'll keep at least a little bit private!)

When my character play, they rarely have to plug anything in.

I've been thinking about what toys each character should play with.

Eric in Turquoise and Leather is inevitably going to spend a lot of time wearing a gag similar to the one above in the future. George is a traditionalist at heart. He'd agree with my ideas of what should consitute sexual technology. It's probably also the only way he's going to get any peace and quiet with Eric around.

The cage on the left?

It hasn't made it into one of my books yet, but I found it while I was surfing around looking for pics for this post. (Sometimes a writers life is hard, lol!) I'm keeping it on file for a future book.

Can you imagine spending some time in that cage? Maybe in the middle of a busy club? Your master has people he needs to speak to. He needs somewhere safe to leave you for a little while.

Maybe I'm weird, but when I see a cage I don't think restraint. I don't think prisioner.

For me a cage represents protection. It means a master's care. It looks like safety.


This one on the right is more about making the heart race than providing quiet comfort.

Suspended in mid air. Completely out of control. Entirely available. Totally dependant upon the person who put you in there. Yep - we're back to the emotional connection again.

It's what a master means when he puts you in there is the thing.

It's what the submissive feels when they are in the restraint. Pretty toys aren't as important as the love and care they represent.

I found this pic below while I was surfing around to.

I love this cushion. (There's a heart shaped one as well - very lovely but a bit too soppy for my tastes.)

Okay, it looks nice. Leather. Metal. All good so far.

But you know what means more than that?

Look at how it's intended to be used.

Leather wrapped around wrist and ankles.

Restraint - safety.

But there's been a bit of extra thought put into this.

Bondage isn't always intended to be comfortable. Sometimes it's uncomfortable for a purpose. That's fine if it's what everyone involved wants. The lady on the right looks happy on a hard floor.

But I get really annoyed by the idea that submissives aren't ever worthy of better. I get wound up by people who think that submission should always be about punishment.

There's room for care and love. There's room in the kinky world for restraints attached to thick comfortable cushions.

Imagine an empty room. Imagine that cushion in the middle of that room and a submissive sitting on it while they wait for their master to return. Or perhaps the cushion is set next to a desk where a master can work knowing that his pet is sitting safely at his feet until he's done.

I quite taken with this slope too.

It's more about play and display than the simple square. It makes a very nice compliment to it.

I wonder if they do a discount if you buy both together?

A perfect matched set. A fine addition to any home.

That's my sort of interior decorating.

Which brings me to another thing I like.

Leather based technologies that fit discreetly and naturally into every day life.

Kinky toys that are also very nice, bery functional pieces of furniture.

Do you like the pretty red circles the metal worker has decorated the bed frame with?

The red coating is leather.

The holes are the right size for a neck, or a pair or ankles, or a pair of wrists. (Not all at the same time unless you're very flexible!)

A bed. A set of stocks.

A place to play. A place to submit. A place to curl up with your lover and fall asleep in their arms.

Which brings me back full circle again. The person you're with. Your submissive, your master, your lover.

All the leather in the world can't replace that connection.

And that's really saying something, coming from a writer who really likes their leather technologies!

Kim Dare.
Kink, love and a happy ending. Do you Dare?