[Thomas_Lord]

How can tech employers use this technology to optimize workplaces for comfort and productivity?

Also, can teledildonics be applied to improve online shopping experiences and social media? I am thinking that buttplug scripts could be the new emojis or css dazzle.

Lastly, there seems to be some asymmetry in the development of these technologies: Passive reception of dildonic signals is emphasized, active transmission of signals that originate as muscle contractions (and such) gets the short shrift. Is this simply a reflection of the generally submissive tendencies of tech workers or is there a larger force at work here?

[qdot76367]

On those first two, we use Tampermonkey as a research platform for A/B testing integration with stock web interfaces.

https://github.com/buttplugio/buttplug-tampermonkey

On the tracking of muscle contractions, I'd recommend checking out the Nogasm project, an open source orgasm denial system that uses air pressure changes to track pelvic floor contractions, which are indicative of arousal levels. These could be tracked against, say, bug rates in code to monitor affective states in developers.

https://github.com/nogasm/nogasm

[ge96]

> air pressure changes

Hmm queue Ripley/Alien -- well "micro-changes in air density"

[salawat]

Woah, woah, woah. Hold up, full stop.

>Passive reception of dildonic signals is emphasized, active transmission of signals that originate as muscle contractions (and such) gets the short shrift.

Just want to make sure I understand what you're asking here; because it sounds to me like you're asking something along the lines of "Hey, the vibrating device is neat, but I'd actually like a device that can directly stimulate movement of the device wearer's muscle groups on reception of a remote signal. Can you do that?"

...because if that is what you're asking, the very idea horrified me at the prospect of the new forms of abuse that technology would enable. And I don't mean "abuse" in a good connotation either.

I'm not saying that anyone here would intend to go that far, but that's the first spit take I've had in response to something I read in a while. Ranks right up there with Neuralink in terms of cans of worms I do not wish to see opened by the unscrupulous.

>Is this simply a reflection of the generally submissive tendencies of tech workers or is there a larger force at work here?

That's an odd lens to look at the tech industry through... What exactly about the art of crafting, building, manipulating, and operating some of the most complex, sprawling in their capacity to influence people's lives/behaviors, and difficult to understand machines on the planet strikes you as submissive? Just because there may be a tendency toward expending energy in a direction someone else is willing to pay for doesn't make the academic exercise an overall act of submission. For that matter, look at how difficult it is to reign in the profession ethically. You have an entire industry worth of movers and doers who collectively have made possible some of the most outstanding advances in the field that is the application of computing machinery, while at the same time completely eviscerating some of the most basic and fundamental principles that have hitherto been nigh unchallenged in the history of the classical western democracy/republic. To program is not to submit; to program is to inflict one's wills and desires on others in the shape of the end product. Assumption of existing mores and the outcome of thoroughly deliberated, collective decisions in regards to the means and ends of any non-trivial project is a necessary thing to enable coordination. Is there some study correlating being a programmer with submissiveness, or is this one of those "introverts are all subs" stereotypes? Tendencies toward conflict aversion or social reservation do not accurately correlate to to submissive/dominant preferences by a long shot from what I've heard/experienced.

Then again, maybe you have a point, and you're referring to another facet of the industry I've never really meshed that well with. I just wish more people understood and looked at the Art the way I do... I don't think I'm very special or out there in the grand scheme of things. I've heard so much "Well, that's just the way it has to be" encouraged and even cultivated in the trenches it makes me sick. Sometimes to the point that I can even entertain there is an adverse selection pressure employment/career-wiseforthe self-direct(ed|ing) professional programmer. There is more disincentive to the practice of the adversarial duties of the engineer in the context of software I cannot help but be shocked it's taken as long as it has for a counterculture against Tech to form.

>These could be tracked against, say, bug rates in code to monitor affective states in developers.

Um... No. I think that is one set of data points better left uncollected/analyzed if only for the safety of laborers in all walks of life. Why are we so enthusiastic about making data like this exploitable? This reminds me of a project someone was working on at an NFJS a few years ago where They were collecting as much information as possible about the meta-state of the programmer at work. All through the presentation I couldn't help shaking the feeling that if managers ever caught wind of it, and decided to integrate it into their performance eval techniques, life as a working programmer would rapidly degenerate.

I apologize if I'm coming off as a complete buzzkill. It isn't like I've not been stimulated by the attraction and appeal of similar contemplation before mind. A lot of fun could be had between two consenting adults. I just hope we spare some time to consider what other uses could come from what we enable.

To sum up, I leave you with a cautionary snippet of wisdom it's taken me a while to come to appreciate:

"There is no greater downer, than the Supreme Square empowered by the Totally Rad;" [and the odds of this happening approach unity as social acceptance, Radness, and time approach infinity].

[Thomas_Lord]

> "Just want to make sure I understand what you're asking here;"

You really don't.

The main thrust (sorry) of teledildonics as commonly pursued is that subject A presses remote buttons or whatever, and subject B experiences some vibration from the sex toy they are using. A has remotely caused the vibration.

A reverse is also conceivable: subject A is using a teledildonic sex toy, and subject B gets some signal (like a ring-tone or whatever) whenever subject A's erogenous zone muscles contract.

In other words, reversing the direction of the signal. Instead of remotely "doing something" to the sex toy user, one would get some information about what the sex toy user is doing on their own. This is what I asked about. You projected something really strange onto it.

> "That's an odd lens to look at the tech industry through... What exactly about the art of crafting, building, manipulating, and operating some of the most complex, sprawling in their capacity to influence people's lives/behaviors, and difficult to understand machines on the planet strikes you as submissive?"

You do it because some jackass told you to do it and gives you some cash to go be rude in bars and restaurants, and to overbid for apartments. Total bdsm degeneracy. Totally undignified. Totally degrading. You're a slave who takes solace in being slightly above the worst off slaves. Nobody in a cooperative society would do what tech workers do and if they tried, they'd be treated as people suffering some kind of cognitive illness.

[qdot76367]

> I just hope we spare some time to consider what other uses could come from what we enable.

Not to make you feel like you overreacted at all, because this is a fantastic reply and I desperately wish I saw more awesome thinking like this around tech and ethics, but I read the OP as a shitpost, and was replying in kind.

The only reason I can give stark commentary like that is because I've done a lot of ethics work on this field (first hire at my startup with an ethicist who helped craft our project mission statement and philosophies), and yeah, it could get REALLY, REALLY bad in terms of labor, privacy, and many other contexts.

If you'd like my full perspective on how/why I build this stuff, I gave a lecture at CMU last year that goes over a lot of it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M43u-iFPfMI

Specifically on the affective state in technical development, I do think biometrics is interesting there, but absolutely not in a way that could be harnessed like I was joking about above (even though it would be because who are we even kidding these days). I did some work on this stuff around 8-9 years ago, a project I called the "Quantified Coder" (I was involved in the whole QuantifiedSelf thing for a while):

https://youtu.be/52Ml_zax4A0?t=768

Please note that this talk happened before the current ML craze of "your face can tell us if you're a bad human" shit. It sounds FAR different now than I did then. There's neuroscience researching doing really great work on affective state of developers these days (like Chris Parnin, who came up here a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23046429) that I think will be legit helpful.

Anyways, my reply was just riffing evilly on those ideas as a joke.

Apologies though, forgot I was in an setting where that reply DEFINITELY might not have come off as (extremely stark) humor.

[Izkata]

> Just want to make sure I understand what you're asking here; because it sounds to me like you're asking something along the lines of "Hey, the vibrating device is neat, but I'd actually like a device that can directly stimulate movement of the device wearer's muscle groups on reception of a remote signal. Can you do that?"

> ...because if that is what you're asking, the very idea horrified me at the prospect of the new forms of abuse that technology would enable. And I don't mean "abuse" in a good connotation either.

E-stim is already a thing, it just lacks (so far) the remote aspect.

[qdot76367]

Remote estim has been around for decades actually, it's just all developed in very small, private (and sometimes extremely hostile, yes I'm looking at you Smartstim) communities so the info doesn't really get out much.