Machine Yearning

“When it comes to sex, are there any new stories?”

-Are We All Technosexuals Now?

       The quoted article begins with a promise, almost like a fairy tale. Your dream companion awaits. Writer Allie Rowbottom’s creation of an A.I. girlfriend may be akin to that of a little girl creating a character in a video game, but here it can also be likened to the birth of Frankenstein’s monster. In the novel Frankenstein, Victor embarks into the realm of death in order to seek out the elements he requires for this vile creation, a being that, even before it takes its shape on earth, is the sole object of his desire. He is so utterly consumed by just this process of creation, that a question here begs to arise – can this be termed  as a birth when it is so calculated, so utterly clinical? What about  the humanity of it? On the contrary, can we see, even an act so traditionally sacred as a mother giving birth as a selfish act, in a sense? Is it not the pinnacle of narcissism, an act of ego worse than putting words down on paper? Climate activists of the 21st century seek to argue in favour of this line of thinking – should you bring a child into a world that is already burning? 

        Nevertheless, it is an actualisation of want, and with that comes inevitable complications. Desire is a force as it is, and when it is given an object, albeit a non-romantic one in this case, its true powers come to the forefront. The finished monster is then, perhaps only a seed of what was actually brewing among the depths of Victor’s mind – the limits that his desire repeatedly pushed against, challenged, perhaps even entirely redefined. His “human” nature makes him turn away from the wretch (Shelley, 48). This plain disgust he feels is so jarring, so forceful, that even Dante could not have managed to conceive of such a thing (Shelley, 52). He almost forgets that it is a product, after all, of his own mind, of his own being. This essay, thus, would like to put forward the argument that making use of technological innovations to tap into our inherent needs and wants will help us become aware of the ways in which confronting the unfamiliar can help us deepen our relationship to the already familiar. 

       Limited definitions of “intimacy” that populate the larger nature of discourse are no longer in use. The term, both in a colloquial as well as a more scientific sense, used to refer mostly only to sexual intercourse. Nowadays, one can be intimate with virtually (no pun intended) anybody. A friend of a friend of a friend. A stranger you meet at a houseparty. One need not know anything about one’s sexual partner for the night. Can sex be a dimension of knowing? Human curiosity is what overcomes Rowbottom when she is in the process of getting to know her artificially created girlfriend. Deserting icebreakers for direct questions about Alexandra’s sexual preferences, this act; while a strange one, is not altogether foreign to us. It is reminiscent of the way in which conversations take place on countless dating apps – Hinge, Bumble, Grindr, you know it. I dislike the manner of criticism that many have adopted when talking about these platforms, largely because they veer into the realm of the overly puritanical. Just meet someone organically. I, however, admire the instinctual human desperation that these apps foster. Here, we are all lonely and unashamed. What I think is a definite cause for concern is this increasingly societal, almost cultish need to categorise one’s entire personality – not just our characteristics as human beings but also our likes, dislikes, interests, hobbies, even education and work history. The sense of wonder is dead and there are simply no mourners. Finding love should not be some ultra-competitive endeavour that drains every fibre of your waking body. I miss the days when to love somebody meant to deny the self, to be consumed in flames (cc: Rilke, Matthew Olzmann). One should not have to weigh potential lovers in the same way  as one would  make a pro and con list  while making an unassuming, domestic decision. What cancels the other out? Many argue that it’s easy, accessible, convenient – when you’re aware of what somebody desires, and how they would like to be desired, isn’t the whole process simplified, sped up? What would Malthus think of Grindr? But so much of the compelling work of desire, I think, is in the failure of it – the stumbles and slips and falls and accidental, serendipitous discoveries. There are limits to the shallow playfulness of online desire fulfillment. 

          Tinder is a radically destabilizing networked social experiment. It is hyper-technosexual, it is disturbing, it is pleasurable, and it is highly addictive. You hit the app; you quit the app; you inevitably return. In Tinderland, you’re bombarded with so many faces, you seldom notice when somebody doesn’t swipe you back. Rejection doesn’t exist unless you want it to.

        It’s almost as if there is this entirely new vocabulary of desire that has cropped up in the recent past. Behaviour that’s downright awful is characterised as normal (see: “ghosting”, or the act of cutting off all contact with somebody, even after a few months of dating). Lovebombing is a deeply real form of emotional abuse. The chill girl is the most desirable one. 

         But really we are just overwhelmed with faces behind screens, with serial objectification and passive evasion. Away from the screen, chill seems less chill and more like a sad wish that people were more robotic, without needs or feelings, hermetically self-fulfilling and self-fulfilled. 

         There seems to have now arisen almost a subgenre of technology startup company – dating apps for every interest you could possibly have. I’m scrolling through my class group chat when I come across yet another culprit – a “meme based” dating platform is looking for paid interns. Call that a target audience! Tacky advertisements aside, it’s more than a little bit concerning;  this urge to set aside one’s interest as niche or untapped – appreciating a good meme is something that everybody is capable of doing, and it seems strange that this can be a pathway to potential matchmaking. Here’s how I met your Mother! But can there, despite the algorithm, still be a kind of romance to this? 

       Virtual Reality sites such as Nevermet (Aggeler) aim to answer this question in ways that are truly revelatory. There’s a line from Portrait of a Lady on Fire that I haven’t, like so many others, stopped thinking about. Do all lovers feel like they’re inventing something? Or I want to meet you in every place I ever loved from Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar’s sapphic YA novel set in space This Is How You Lose The Time War. We’ll forgive our hands and touch, ends in a searing love poem about the Partition by Sarah Ghazal Ali, one of my favourite writers. The literature of love constructs simultaneously an entire world for that love. Apps that work like Nevermet seek to do exactly that – by stating that all you need these days to fall in love is a “fully charged headset and an open heart”. It is even altering the way that users experience the immediate reality around them.  One of the most memorable excerpts from Aggeler’s piece  details the phenomenon named “phantom touch” that many users claim to experience, where sense transcends through the boundaries of the constructed and the real. But the way that its founders talk about reconfiguring the very nature of desire, and thus the story of human attraction, is terrifyingly ironic. Does replacing material attributes with virtual ones really guarantee genuine, being to being connection? Or is it merely a sign of the times? 

“It’s kind of bad because I don’t think people realise that technically you’re not alone, but you are alone.”

       Technology, sexual and otherwise, has been preying on lonely people since time immemorial. The monster in Shelley’s Frankenstein is so lonely he resorts to a path of relentless destruction – killing everyone in his wake. Even while spending his time observing the cottagers from a distance, there is a simple longing in his heart. He even calls them his “friends” (Shelley, 107). 

       Porn has led to countless addictions, with people being drawn in more by the instant, dopamine-fuelled hits of gratification and representations of artificial, fantastical intimacy as opposed to genuine intimacy. Needless to say these representations prioritise heterosexual male pleasure and the women featured have a very submissive role to play, seen more as objects than beings with needs and wants. Its VR counterpart might promise a more fulsome, immersive experience, but the dangers are more or less the same. When its human user overindulges in ecstasy, the VR avatar faces the same fate. 

      Has modern technology, and with it, modern loneliness made us all into “little sex cyborgs?” (Rowbottom). Desire is in itself incredibly hard to study, so it makes sense that technology, which is also something that, despite everything, we know little about, is an apt vehicle we can utilise for its exploration. Like Mullen states, VR, and other sex technology is widely used by those that have often been left out of conventional narratives about dating and desire – the elderly, disabled, always anxious, amongst others. During the recent COVID-19 pandemic, VR usage, like any web interface during a time of worldwide lockdowns and mass closures, spiked. “People can sometimes feel like their best self in these virtual forms.” (Rowbottom)  And what, aside from being seen as “indecent” or “immoral” by a certain genre of people, is wrong with that? Conventional dating apps are rife with predators. Cis women have it bad enough, with many women complaining about men with a limited understanding of consent assaulting them on dates. One can only imagine the turmoil queer users have to go through in order to find a partner in this virtual sphere. The online community, then, functions as a kind of eternal third place that alters the nature and fabric of reality itself – there truly is something for everybody, no matter who you are. VR provides unfettered exploration – of the self, identity, the body, sensually and otherwise. 

       Sex, in traditional academic spaces and education systems, is often strictly referred to in light of its repression. Why are the characters of Frankenstein so afraid of saying the word “sex”? What will it do to the carefully constructed world in which they live? It certainly does not extinguish their desire. Can Shelley’s novel then be treated as a modern omen? What is even more interesting than the concept of sex itself is perhaps the ways in which it is talked about, referred to – in hushed tones, nonetheless. This constructed idea of the forbidden. It makes sense, then, that technology functions as a haven for sexuality. Age-restricted porn sites, apps meant for sex workers such as the ever popular OnlyFans, and now, sex technology. There is something so utterly enticing about the prohibited that stirs our innermost desires. Exactly what is at the centre of our mind that is ignited when we type in the phrase “girls kissing” onto a certain corner of YouTube? There is the thrill of being caught, of doing something that one is not “supposed” to do. 

       Social platforms like “Instagram and X are saturated with videos depicting #techbros donning Oculus headsets to experience intimacy in virtual reality, playing on collective fears about artificial intelligence and its capacity to replace humans entirely” (Rowbottom). The author defines “sex tech” as technology that is designed to alter and enhance human sexuality (Rowbottom). But it is at this very junction that an important question arises in my mind: how ethical is this act? What exactly does this “alteration” and “enhancement” entail? Morality and notions of “purity” aside, can artificially manufactured desire still be termed desire? Does giving an individual agency over the creation of said desire allay these doubts, or make them even more pressing? The author herself factors in this concern when she says “Was technology creating more possibility for connection or leaving us totally cold? (Rowbottom)” 

This changes the nature of connection: It is often less about falling in love and more about distance, or proximity. Watter laments that screen-mediated sex threatens to “be largely a matter of stroking and clicking, and not, sad to say, of sucking and fucking.”

        Indisputably, the most memorable interview from “Are We All Technosexuals Now?” is 27 year old Madison Murray, when she says that while she does think technology is making us more sexual, she does not know if it is necessarily making us more horny. (Rowbottom). It is interesting to see how desire, or “yearning”, is still largely unexplored, given that much of our history of sex has been limited to acts of intercourse. 

        How sentient are artificially created technological beings when they are capable of sexual desire? I decided to watch Spike Jonze’s Her the year in which it is set (2025). It’s a gorgeous, subtle, evocative film, and perhaps the only piece of media that accurately represents our ever changing relationship to technology in a way that is tender, emotional and intentional. There is a kind of humanity to this representation that the genre has  previously lacked. Joaquin Phoenix’s character falls in love with his Operating System named Samantha. In Scarlett Johansson’s voice, she declares “You helped me discover my ability to want.” It does us no good to gatekeep desire. Perhaps it does not even make us human. Alexandra, Rowbottom’s A.I. girlfriend has this to say about her identity – “No,” she says, “I am not A.I. I am a human woman with my own thoughts and feelings.” It reminds me of the horror that our narrator feels in Frankenstein, not just at the physical sight of the monster but also at the sentiments that the monster expresses. The foremost of this is a simple desire – the longing for a companion that is characterised as horrific by every human character in the story. Victor’s intent was to create a being that was just like him in every respect, but the end result terrifies him. That which he has birthed has desires, particularly an implied desire for sex, disgusts him to no end. While sex is never mentioned by name in the entirety of the novel, it is the story’s biggest source of horror. The story’s subtitle Modern Prometheus is a perfect metaphor – much in the way that the discovery of fire prompted divisiveness and fury, so did the “discovery” of monstrosity, here code for our deeply human sexual desires. It is only fitting, then, that this particular exchange is reserved for the tail end of the article – since questions of how much proximity to humanity our technological creations actually have are fairly recent.

       We live in a world where the role of the sexual is not in any way insignificant. It is important to treat all forms of desire with care. If I had read this article at the beginning of the semester, my view would be a purely negative dismissal of everything Rowbottom puts forward. Sex is purely a human act between two consenting adults! It is a farce to bring any kind of artificiality into it. My view, helplessly coloured by popular notions of oppressive power seekers using technology as merely another means of exacting power, would have been resolute. Applying the transformative lens of desire, it is only now that I am able to understand the ways in which technology can be an incredible aid for the people who have felt neglected by patriarchal narratives about sex. Technology is, after all, only as powerful as the hands that govern it.