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Who's ready for the world's first 'smart' vibrator?
If lighting a few candles and flipping to page 300-something in your ratty copy of Fifty Shades of Grey is too last-century for you, a new crowd-funded venture on Indiegogo could be just the thing to take your solo love sessions into the 21st century. Disruption!
Behold the Vibease, a magical gadget that bills itself as the world's "first wearable smart vibrator."
You may be asking: What, pray tell, is a smart vibrator? According to pitch person and co-founder Hermione Way, former star of Bravo's now-canceled reality series Start-ups: Silicon Valley, the smart toy differs from dumb ones by offering "an immersive sensual experience that brings your fantasies to life with the use of your smartphone."
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Basically, that's a fancy way of saying the thing buzzes when synced to audiobooks of moody erotic fiction that you can download to your phone. Here's how Way explains it in the video above:
The audio fantasy sets the mood, the vibrator will begin changing intensity and rhythm based on the content of the story. […] If the voice in the story says, "Your skin feels so soft..." the vibrator will vibrate softly. If the story moves to, "I miss you so badly..." the vibrator will respond accordingly and vibrate harder.
But wait! There's more. The device's pulses can be triggered remotely. That means if your significant other is flying from Chicago to New York for a business meeting, he or she could theoretically activate the thing from first class as long as Gogo's Inflight Internet is working.
And so far at least, the Vibease looks like a hit. At the time of writing this, it had already smashed its modest $15,000 fundraising goal on Indiegogo by $2,000. Between this and the porn-ification of Google Glass, it looks like Silicon Valley's influence on the other valley is just getting warmed up.
Chris Gayomali is the science and technology editor for TheWeek.com. Previously, he was a tech reporter at TIME. His work has also appeared in Men's Journal, Esquire, and The Atlantic, among other places. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
