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Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots by [Kate Devlin]

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Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots Kindle Edition

by Kate Devlin (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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'Illuminating, witty and written with a wide open mind' Sunday Times

The idea of the seductive sex robot is the stuff of myth, legend and science fiction. From the myth of Laodamia in Ancient Greece to twenty-first century shows such as Westworld, robots in human form have captured our imagination, our hopes and our fears. But beyond the fantasies there are real and fundamental questions about our relationship with technology as it moves into the realm of robotics.

Turned On explores how the emerging and future development of sexual companion robots might affect us and the society in which we live. It explores the social changes arising from emerging technologies, and our relationships with the machines that someday may care for us and about us. Sex robots are here, and here to stay, and more are coming.

Computer scientist and sex-robot expert Kate Devlin is our guide as we seek to understand how this technology is developing. From robots in Greek myth and the fantastical automata of the Middle Ages through to the sentient machines of the future that embody the prominent AI debate, she explores the 'modern' robot versus the robot servants we were promised by twentieth century sci-fi, and delves into the psychological effects of the technology, and issues raised around gender politics, diversity, surveillance and violence. This book answers all the questions you've ever had about sex robots, as well as all the ones you haven't yet thought of.

Print length

289 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Bloomsbury Sigma
Publication date

October 18, 2018
File size

1134 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“An immensely absorbing and provocative book on the past, present, and future of robosexuality . . . A curiously fascinating study.” ―Kirkus

“Illuminating, witty and written with a wide open mind.” ―Sunday Times

“A lively, waggish guide to these uncharted waters, tracing ethics, sexuality, intimacy and the uncanny.” ―Tatler

“A highly readable romp through the history of computers, robots and sex toys [...] A fascinating introduction to the state of sex-tech.” ―Science

“For fans of Humans, Westworld and I, Robot. Or anyone who's ever enjoyed a flirtation with Alexa. Devlin takes us right through the AI revolution and its potential impact on our relationships [with] a relaxed and chatty tone.” ―Cosmopolitan

“An engaging survey of the history of humanoids.” ―Financial Times

“A timely, vital treatise [...] With charm and wit she tackles thorny issues.” ―Wired

“An unusually cool-headed tour of the current sexbot terrain. [...] Devlin's calmer, more evidence-based middle path seems appealing, especially in an area where so much polemic has already risked deadening the nerves.” ―Harper's Magazine

“One of Devlin's achievements is to humanise the sex robot makers and users – we are invited not to laugh at them, but to understand them.” ―The Times

“Big on breadth and charm ... loaded with facts and anecdotes.” ―The Saturday Paper

“This brilliant book is an intelligent, clear-eyed and often very funny deep dive into the history and future of love and machinery.” ―Warren Ellis, author of Transmetropolitan

“After millennia of fornicating with foreign objects, the ultimate sex toy has finally arrived. Kate Devlin unpacks the very long, very dense history of the sex robot with style and wit. Spoiler alert: we haven't reached Westworld ... yet.” ―Christopher Trout, Editor-in-Chief, Engadget

“In Turned On, Kate Devlin – the thinking person's navigator to the complex and potentially life-enhancing terrain of the sex robot – looks at the history of AI-enhanced erotic toys, then ventures far beyond our wildest imaginings.” ―Rowan Pelling, Editor of The Amorist

--This text refers to the paperback edition.

About the Author

Kate Devlin is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Digital Humanities at King's College London. Having begun her career as an archaeologist before moving into computer science, Devlin's research is in the fields of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), investigating how people interact with and react to technology in order to understand how emerging and future technologies will affect us and the society in which we live.

A few years ago, Kate began to explore the particular ways in which sex, gender and sexuality might be incorporated into cognitive systems such as sexual companion robots; since then she has become a driving force in the field of intimacy and technology. In short, Kate has become the face of sex robots – quite literally in the case of one mis-captioned tabloid photograph. She has written articles on the subject for New Scientist, Prospect and i, appeared on BBC Radios 1–5, and made a number of TV appearances, along with TEDx talks and numerous other tech and philosophy events, receiving significant media coverage on the way. She was probably the first person to say 'sex robots' in the House of Lords – in an official capacity, at least.

--This text refers to the paperback edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07D16PJ13
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bloomsbury Sigma; 1st edition (October 18, 2018)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 18, 2018
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1134 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 289 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1472950895
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #999,762 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #166 in Human Sexuality (Kindle Store)
- #188 in Robotic Engineering
- #297 in Robotics & Automation (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
47 ratings

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4 star		28%
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2 star		8%
1 star 0% (0%)		0%

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Top reviews from the United States

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S. LeVay

Well-written, but too much irrelevant information

Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2019

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This is a thorough and mostly readable account of sex robots of the past, present, and future. My one complaint is that the author devotes so many pages to what she considers important background material. In reading the book my frequent thought was "Bring on the sex robots -- please!"

4 people found this helpful

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RAmazon Customer

robots making love

Reviewed in the United States on January 9, 2019

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hilarious book on robots and robots that make love. The author is well trained and takes it seriously, and especially she has an open mind to it, which is very important in these things. I am too old to experiment on them, bu I can see her point..... and the inevitabiity of robots and AI.

2 people found this helpful

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Peyton Moran

Science, Sex, and Robots

Reviewed in the United States on July 14, 2019

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Phenomenal. I was introduced to this subject & niche topic a few years ago by a pastor of a church in the Southern Baptist Convention, as well as two friends attending seminary. This book has allowed me to think more deeply about the topic, whether that be the ethics, regulations, implications, and effects that technology and sex have on society at large. I would recommend this book to practically anyone interested in the following subjects: bioethics, HCI/UX, the history of sex, and technological development.

One person found this helpful

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Wayne

Most interesting read

Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2019

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Like most I have read news stories on line and watch a few shows on TV. Nice to have a book that tells what is going on now and the history of "devices" a good read well worth your time and money.

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Shannon

Great Book

Reviewed in the United States on October 26, 2019

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Great book at a great price

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Nigel Seel

A feminist on sex machines

Reviewed in the United States on November 12, 2018

The concept of a 'machine for sex’ is a wondrous, powerful one. As the author notes, its arc aligns with all of human history. Devlin describes ‘sex toys’ from prehistory and antiquity right through to the present day. The term ‘sex robot’ itself is rather reified. Better is the idea of an artefact with which humans may engage sexually. Such an artefact might be genetically engineered, machine fabricated or some hybrid in between. Sex devices interestingly inhabit the intersection of science and technology, genetics and evolutionary biology, and the myriad social sciences.

If a sex robot is defined as a thing, as human property, then they existed once, currently don't really exist and may exist again in the middling future. In antiquity slaves were property and presumed to have no agency. It was routine and uncontroversial for elite slave-owning males to buy and use nubile male and female slaves for sex. As Kyle Harper recounts in his “Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275–425”, consequences included masters becoming (stupidly) besotted with their slave sex-objects, wifely jealousy .. and unintended offspring who would join the next generation of slaves.

Antique ‘sex robots’ were, from a purely functional point of view, poorly implemented. Their inner drives and motivations were not aligned with their 'function’ which made ownership fraught and only manageable through sustained terror. Devlin’s first degree was in archaeology so she will know all this. It would have been good to read about the social, ethical and even practical implications of the widespread availability of high-functioning ‘sex robots’ in antiquity. Devlin's discussion is however superficial (pp.116-117), flagging only the usual oppressively gendered roles found in all premodern societies stabilised by male violence. She also notes a pre-Christian sexual disinhibition of which she approves.

“Turned On” is not a book of science with some feminist advocacy, it's a feminist tract centred on sex-with-artefacts (p.213). What’s this for example - a mocking rebuke to the transgression of equal outcomes?

“Why do we experience things? How do the mechanisms of our bodies and brains give rise to conscious sensations? Where does that consciousness come from? You don’t have to have an answer in the Great Zombie Debate. The philosophers can’t agree on it either, Which is why you have a bunch of very clever middle-aged white men amusingly inventing words like‘ ‘zoombie’ and ‘zimboe’ to put forward their own variations on the theory. “ (p. 102)

It's certainly of the moment, but it jars.

Take objectification, something she takes strong issue with. The discussion is phenomenological: an example might be a builder wolf-whistling an attractive woman in the street; or a bunch of women hooting and laughing at a male stripper at a ‘hen party’. In the broad-brush triune brain model, primary drives such as lust are associated with the (animalistic) brainstem formation; emotional attachment with the mammalian limbic system; and rational interaction with hominid cortical systems. It’s not much of a surprise that humans can exhibit sexual behaviour dominated by any of these loci. Objectification (the mode of lust-dominance) would then be a brain-stem determined form of behaviour. In more refined circles we expect cortical inhibition/mediation of primary drives to deliver more measured, prosocial behaviour factoring in social context. Our biology is complicated in social settings.

There isn’t any such framing in Devlin's book. Just normative presumption that objectification is out there (for some reason), that’s it’s wrong and that current sex doll designs play up to it. This is to sell the reader short, replacing analysis with moralising. Naturally we don't wish to succumb to the naturalistic fallacy; humans with their small group evolutionary history are imperfectly adapted to large scale societies. There are plenty of natural urges we need to regulate and indeed legislate against. There are few easy answers here as Devlin would be the first to argue, in contexts such as the legality and ethics of child sex dolls.

Devlin adopts the fashionable feminist view that phenomenal gender differences are purely social constructs. This despite the enormous weight of hard evidence (evolutionary, neuroanatomic, genomic, physical, psychometric) for well-defined and reproducible biological differences between the sexes. Differences which are hardly obscure, but recognition of which might undermine the claims of her interest group. Public choice theory assumes its usual relevance here.

Devlin interviews the CEO of RealDoll, Matt McMullen, and gives him a hard time about the overwhelming preponderance of hyper-sexualised female dolls and robots. 'Where are the less-sexualised dolls, the male dolls?' she wants to know. Actually this is a point she takes up with all the doll manufacturers she meets. The replies she gets are defensive, framed in terms of male-female differences in sexuality leading to skews in demand. Devlin is having none of it, blaming biased marketing and uncritical social conditioning (pp. 153-154). Time for a quick review of microeconomics (supply-demand equilibria?) then as I reflect on the democracy of markets in probing the world as it actually is.

Then we read this in a meandering discussion of rape fantasies and the claimed lack of any genetic influence:

“If anything, rape would theoretically reduce the reproductive success of our ancestors as it takes away selective genetic choice. “ (p. 233).

Reality is more nuanced. Rape is historically (and currently) commonplace in intergroup conflicts. It's plainly adaptive for males in the absence of draconian ingroup penalties. I suggest a quick read of Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene".

Gendered social roles have historically been oppressive to women. There are biological reasons (eg male physical strength, aggression and paternity-uncertainty) which interlink with social reasons (eg within-family inheritance) which are specific to different kinds of society and which need to be explicitly teased out. If capitalism appears to be intrinsically gender-blind in its desire to free *everyone* up to maximally work, then the deleterious effects on human self-reproduction also need some analysis.

A perennial science-fictional trope referenced by Tom Whipple, The Times science editor in his review of Devlin's book, is that of the perfected sex robot as a kind of sterile mosquito (which has already resulted in some local extinctions of this malaria disease vector). This is not a problem we'll face anytime soon but is there something to it? Devlin is unworried while Whipple remains concerned. Plainly it’s hard to assess an unknown artefact but with universal and easy access to contraception in the west, perhaps we already have a natural experiment. Check those Total Fertility Ratios. We are already selecting for women who positively want children (rather than just sex); ubiquitous effective and sterile sex robots would select for men with a similar drive. Let's just hope there's that much variability in the gene pool.

In summary Devlin's book is an easy and amusing read: somewhat superficial; an interesting tour of the sex doll/sex toy landscape which will be unfamiliar to many readers; intriguing confessional snippets from the author's private life. The book is not particularly scandalous or salacious, it's not very conceptual or analytic and its opinions are conventional liberal left. Put aside a slightly sprawling and uneven structure and it reads like an extended New Scientist article.

13 people found this helpful

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Mia

Robots

Reviewed in the United States on December 23, 2018

Robots. Yes. How do I love robots? Let’s count the ways. Well, for the sake of brevity, maybe not, but let’s just say I really, really love robots…although not in the way some of the denizens of this book do. So while I’d love a robot best friend, a robot romantic and/or sexual partner isn’t something that spins my dreams around. In fact once I watched a program about men (and it’s nearly always men) who were trying to find (ok, buy) their perfect robotic mate and they were exactly the sad sack can’t make it with a real woman stereotypes you’d think they’d be. But in whatever way you want to utilize them, let’s face it, robots are the future. They are already all around us (Hi, Alexa) and are getting smarter every day, but they still haven’t nearly reached that level of autonomy and sentience that makes us think of singularity event, terminators and apocalypses. Frankly…I say bring it on. And not just because I’ve just listened to Robots of Gotham on audio, the book where robots did take over. But seriously in this day and age it might be an improvement. The thought of being governed by an artificial intelligence seems infinitely preferable to the inverse of that. But anyway…this book is all about robots and sex, often together, sometimes separately. It gives a comprehensive historical overview of how technology got to where it is now, ponders what’s next, considers sexuality as it evolved over time to be a much more complex multilayered thing than past models, but mainly it contemplates the ethics of robot/person involvements. After all, there are situations and jobs you’d be glad to turn over to robots right now, very practical things like caretaking, assembly, etc. But however lonely the world gets, however much time is spent playing games, interacting via social media or in virtual reality…or not interacting at all and shutting the world out Japanese style…there’s still a significant taboo about having a robot mate. Possibly because technology is as of yet far from perfect, still talking a semiautonomous preprogrammed cranium upon a blow up doll body more often than not. Possibly because such a union would usher in a brave new world not everyone’s quite ready to contemplate yet. For me robots…whether it’s to eradicate loneliness, provide essential assistance or even just to hang out…bring it on. Can’t be nearly as disappointing as the flesh bags (or whatever derogatory moniker the robots use to discuss us) and probably definitely smarter than most. But it was still very interesting to read about all the psychological, ethical and social implications of such an evolution. And the book was very entertaining, the author’s funny, erudite, very feminist, opinionated and clever…so that should give you an idea of what sort of perspective you’re getting here. Very enjoyable read, not so much educating (knew a lot of it already and also really wish there were photos) as enlightening and tons of food for thought. Science, sex and robots…how can you not love that combination. And now back to dreaming of technology finally matching up to my imagination.

2 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Jon A. Crowcroft

robot for intimacy or just zipless sex?

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 15, 2020

Verified Purchase

This book is a survey of the current work on robots being proposed, developed and deployed in intimate settings with humans. I found it an interesting read - while there are quite a few plausible settings for caring robots, the risks of fooling people that a robot actually feels anything (at least for the foreseeable future) is also discussed in depth here.

I was a bit disappointed that the use of robots as part of reproduction (e.g. AI as in Artificial insemination, but also robot carried artificial wombs) wasn't on the menu - after all, sex is not just about fun - there's a serious goal some of the time and technology is already in use to help people that have problems with that side of the story of life.

I like the author's refusal to avoid terrible jokes - it lightened up the book without trivialising the more important aspects. Note she is a serious academic researcher in this area, so this is very well informed technically, as well as having excellent up-to-date and realistic industry survey material.

I'd recommend this book for people that think AI (as in General Artificial Intelligence) is anywhere near:
To Be a Machine: by Mark O'Connell.

One person found this helpful

Just Another Customer

An intelligent, funny, sexy joy

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 13, 2020

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This is an excellent, excellent book - intelligent, easy-to-read and very funny.

Devlin has a real fluency with a very complex subject - covering technological, cultural and ethical advances in the use of tech in sex.

The book is very visual - it’s so well written that I could picture it all in my mind like it was a documentary. Why hasn’t this been made into a 3-part TV documentary series yet? It’s perfect. Devlin - a regular on podcasts, radio and TV - would be the perfect guide through this world.

We are introduced to key players - human and technological - and locations like a broad, sweeping novel.

The threads of the analysis run effortlessly through all of this - learning has never been so much fun. Chapters hand over nearly to one another. And the jokes - of which there are a good few - are very funny.

lol no

Insightful

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 17, 2019

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Really interesting and worthwhile read on a topic we don’t talk enough about

One person found this helpful

AvidJosh

Turned on

Reviewed in Canada on February 26, 2019

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Very well written and to the point. Enjoyed reading it.

Katherine Boere