Last Sunday, a man by the handle of Sal9000 was married to Nene Anegasaki of the Nintendo DS game, Love Plus. The ceremony was lovely by any standards, including an audience, a priest, and both the bride and groom. It was also webcast over the asian version of 4Chan, which is why we have the video below, courtesy of Boing Boing.
Okay, so it’s maybe a little pathetic, but it’s not without precedent. The Greek playwright Ovid recounts a story where the sculptor Pygmalion falls in love with a statue. The desire for romance is strong in humanity, but we are sorely limited by time and space such that finding the right person to share that romance is like finding a needle in a haystack when the haystack can sue for assault when you go groping through it. Even then, the high divorce rate shows that the first time quite often isn’t the charm. No wonder the desire to create one’s lover whole cloth is there, in the back of our collective minds.
I harp on this theme because our technology is allowing us to simulate other beings, thinking beings, and while the characters in our games are primitive and scripted now, that may not be the case in the future. We are entering an age were it probably will be possible to build your ideal soulmate in a character designer.
The field of robotics is also seeing a renaissance, as engineering catches up to our imagination. Take your custom-built personality program, download it into the future’s bastard child of Asimo and a Realdoll, and what then? A custom-designed partner who looks, acts, and loves the way you want it to. Try finding that on the dating scene.
The Stepford Wives wasn’t a horror movie, it’s marketing copy from ten years in the future.
Our friend Sal9000 is just the first raindrop to signal the coming flood. Stay tuned as we cover the literal marriage of humans and technology, already in progress.
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