I’ve been doing a lot of reading about the game Second Life over the past few days, in an effort to think through more of the implications of the talks on virtual reality that we’ve been having here. I have a bunch of different directions I plan on taking this topic over the next few days, but this is a really intriguing place to start, I think.

From BBC News:

If you walked into a room and found your partner in a passionate clinch with someone else you’d probably have good cause to worry.

But would you worry if those doing the kissing were characters in a game being controlled by your partner and someone else?

For some players of Second Life, a massive multi-player online role-playing game, such virtual infidelity is a step too far.

So to keep an eye on their loved ones, some spouses are paying real money to in-game detectives, to snoop on the character or avatar used by their real world partner.

Also interesting is that these in-game detectives will resort to creating honey pots (or honey “traps”) to intentionally ensnare players in compromising situations. Apparently some of the people who are hiring these detectives are “real life” boyfriends or girlfriends who want to keep an eye on the virtual sexploits of their significant other. While others seem to be hired by in-game partners for more or less the same reasons.

This opens up a whole can of worms about the nature of relationships and fidelity, for which there are no easy answers - especially as we move forward technologically, with things like teledildonics:

Teledildonics is a virtual reality application which allows users to interactively have sex with other users who may be miles away, or across the globe. It is currently in its infancy, but poised to take the world by storm in the next few years. While eventually techonology will allow for full-body suits which stimulate all five senses, the first generation of teledildonic devices will be much simpler. The hardware currently being developed by several manufactures consist of a device that you would strap onto your pelvic region. The first TD devices will be automatic penis stimulators which connect to your computer via a cable so that software running on your machine can control the motions of the device. […] You slip the device over your penis (probably with a couple drops of lubricant), plug the control cable into your printer port, and the device slides up and down under control of the software you are running. This way you could be talking to a live girl on a website watching her, and she could remotely pleasure you. Or the device could be used while playing a game, mimicking the action you see on the screen.

Not surprisingly, very basic forms of this technology are being adapted to be used in games like Second Life. Also check out this article about teledildonics on Wired.

Interestingly, such technology could easily be touted as the magic bullet of safe sex:

Now before you dismiss the whole idea as just a gimmick, let me point out there are many legitimate purposes for such a device. If you are with someone, but can’t be together for extended periods of time because of a job or school, you can use one to remain faithful. If you are handicapped, normal sex might be physically impossible. If you have an incurable STD (like HIV, or Herpes) normal sex will carry a risk of transmission. If you are too shy around members of the opposite sex, you might prefer the anonymity that can be obtained with such a device. Whatever the reason, you can be assured that such devices are going to become available on the market in the near future.

Just another instance of the movie Demolition Man successfully predicting the near future. In any case, whether it’s safe sex or no, it clearly raises all kinds of issues about the nature and boundaries of fantasy, imagination, reality, sex, love and relationships. These things are all pretty damned complicated to begin with, and these virtual reality developments promise to complicate things even farther.

Do you think you’ll find yourself hiring a virtual detective to track down the virtual exploits of your significant other in the future? Maybe we’ll soon see a new spin-off of that tv show Cheaters. How and where do we draw the lines of acceptibility in our relationships or are those lines about to be obliterated forever?