June 20th, 2008 by artfldgr

It was the article over at Fox: Japanese Firm Creates Robot Girlfriend for Lonely Men  that got me thinking about the implications of things that are coming around the corner in the near future.

Finally, women are not the only ones who can have a lover that needs batteries. Plumbing the new depths of markets Sega has delved into the market of men who “just wont commit”, and has given them a companion, and a helpmeet. Ok, not much of a helpmeet, Ema can only give out business cards. Ema also can only kiss and will never be ready for the boudoir in this incarnation, though some men say they are already used to this any way.

While Ema is “diminutive” by dating standards for pretty much all men (except perhaps the deceased Tom Thumb of Barnum fame), Ema stands a bit taller and has the old figure that Barbie can only now dream of. Though with a September price tag of $175 (in Japan), Ema is a bit pricier than a Bratz doll, but she moves. 

Who ever thought, that when women decided to make men as irrelevant as bicycles for fish, that the men might decide to use the same skills they used to create a society that thinks it doesn’t need them, and invent a woman to be a new companion and helpmeet for them? 

Granted, most men will not get far with a woman that is only 15 inches tall, though the situation will not stay that way forever. Real Doll is another version that doesn’t move. Real Doll makes up for it by being attractive, life size, and has parts that I suppose work good enough since her price tag is pretty high. 

If you have paid attention then you might have noticed that other companies are making robots that are getting better and better. That it will not be long before they will look good enough for a lot of things. Discussions in some science circles of man machine love and marriage have been written and published recently.  All of this raises some very interesting questions in the future.

Will man machine weddings take place?

Will the average man (or woman) be able to enjoy any adventure a la Westworld,

Will the perversions that are illegal today, be perfectly find since it’s only a mechanical machine that someone is with?

After all, would it be illegal for a brothel that offered such machines that literally could be made to cover categories that the typical twisted mind could never dream of partaking in?

Given that the female version of the bunny ranch didn’t quite make it, what does this say for the future of what women will experience?

They are already experience the men who have no purpose that play video games and now can have a little friend to keep them company. They don’t seem to like that kind of guy much, so I am unsure what their solution will be.

In the future, in a world where couples don’t need to marry, and the structure of home life is collapsing, it is interesting that the modern woman will literally end up competing against a stepford wife, and rental models.

Hotels would start stocking them: “hello? Room service? Hi! Could you send up Ms robojoy to room 2112? Thank you!”

I would suspect that women would pine for the days like today in which its only hard to find a man, not impossible to peel him away from the only product that might catch his attention quite a bit more than two sports seasons.

One thing for certain is that Sega is going to make a lot of money. Even on just the novelty of it. They hope to sell 10,000 units in the first year, and I suspect that they wont be able to make them fast enough for a while.

The rest will only be a matter of time.

Of course the kind of man that we used to have wouldn’t have thought a machine would be a decent choice. Now all that has changed in  so many ways, what was impossible in the past, is very likely in the future.

Bout the only advice I could offer would be that you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. So if you visit your new squeeze, and you see a 15 inch competitor there flipping you a business card, remember it was 100 years ago when the main means of transportation was still a horse and cars were just coming on the scene.

Tomorrow comes pretty fast, and painting oneself into a corner is never pleasant.