SINGAPORE – Aside from obvious, rampant swiping, how has technology changed our definitions of love, sex and relationships?
Berenice Magistretti recently traveled to Singapore to moderate a panel on Love 3.0 at the IMI Festival – the Innovation Music Inspiration festival, which features international and local music acts, inspirational talks, art installations and tech from leading innovators. Four speakers set out to explore this super relevant and complex question.
Dema Tio, cofounder and CEO of Vibease, a smart vibrator that can be used remotely in long-distance relationships and synced with erotic audio playbooks; Erin Chen, a sex and relationship counselor and founder of SPARK Fest Asia; Krystal Choo, founder and CEO of Wander, an app that allows users to chat in groups by topic of interest; and Louise Troen, the global brand director at Bumble, a social networking app that allows women to make the first move, among other subsequently developed functioned, were all present.
Magistretti wrote up the key takeaways from the panel discussion for VentureBeat, which included the following.
From offline to online dating
Technology may have changed the way we court – from phone calls to emojis, online profile “screening” and more – but it hasn’t changed the way we love.
According to Helen Fisher, an anthropologist who studies gender differences and the evolution of human emotions, the core systems in our brains that drive us to love evolved over 4.4 million years ago, “and they’re not gonna change if you swipe left or right on Tinder.”
Upon reading this, I immediately wondered what impact saturating these long-established core brains systems in baths of rapid fire, totally new stimuli might have. Like trying to move a glacier at an accelerated speed, what does bombarding these hard wires with relatively sudden, yet intense modern courtship do?
Is technology empowering women?
If dating apps have become the norm for both genders, are we moving toward a more progressive society? Specifically, will women’s and men’s sex behaviors, long regarded as different, even in instances of the exact same behavior, be regarded less disparately?
The jury is still out.
Let’s talk about sex
While dating apps facilitate encounters, technology also has its place in the bedroom. Accoring to Magistretti, one question that came up during the panel discussion is whether technology can improve sex. Vibease’s Dema Tio said it can. According to him, sex for women can be even better with a vibrator — since about 75 percent of women never reach orgasm from intercourse alone, a little extra help is sometimes needed.
Okay, but to what degree will average citizens let technology into their bedrooms? Will we be having sex with robots in the future? Programming them to satisfy our every need and please us on demand?
Magistretti said, with roboticists around the world perfecting human-like androids, we might just get there one day.
Image via Adam Jackson.
