YNOT – You know the future of sex has arrived when high-tech erotic gizmos and gadgets are unveiled at adult venues like AVN’s Adult Entertainment Expo … and serious mainstream geek publications take notice.

A LiveScience.com headline on Jan. 11 blared, “Adult Entertainment Expo Rivals CES 2011 in Tech Advances.” The corresponding report supported writer Stuart Fox’s shock and awe with respectful coverage about a few of the kinkier products on display at the show.

“Wowed” sums up Fox’s response to items like the Fleshdrive, a USB thumb drive that holds 20 movies. Fox called Fleshdrive a potential bridge between physical media and streaming video, especially for consumers still wrestling with bandwidth-related internet access issues.

Vsex, too, raised eyebrows and curiosity with its interactive technology system, which allows end-users remote control of a sex toy in the hands of their favorite live-cam performers.

Augmented reality, which overlays computer information or images on the real world, has intrigued developers for many years. Companies like Pink Visual may be on the verge of returning the adult industry to the ranks of the technologically innovative with augmented reality systems that place users into an erotic scene of their choosing.

“A lot of us are real big tech geeks,” Pink Visual Director of Special Programs Liam Colins told LiveScience.com by way of explaining the merger of sex and technology in his company’s product. “We love our toys in the non-adult sense, too.”