In RetroTech: NetLingo Blog

Robotics expert David Levy, author of Love + Sex with Robots says in five years, people will be having sex with robots and in forty years, full-blown romantic relationships. Apparently the development of artificial intelligence and robots is proceeding so rapidly that "soon it will be possible to produce anatomically correct mechanical partners that are sort of an upgrade to the sex dolls on sale now, complete with sound effects." It will take quite a bit longer for robotic science to progress to the point at which artificial intelligence is capable of holding conversations with humans and forming a reasonable facsimile of a romantic relationship, but Levy says it's inevitable. "You will find robots conversation partners that will talk to you and you will get as much pleasure from it as talking to another human." It may seem grotesque to fall in love with a robot, but Levy says that for people with psychological problems or physical deformities, it could be a huge consolation as there are millions of people in the world who have nobody. Call me old-fashioned but that sounds like a major RTBS. Film at 11.

Like many people who use the Internet to communicate with friends and connect with people, I'm continually amazed at how rude and insincere humans sometimes behave when interacting on electronic devices--seemingly because you're not F2F in real life. Take Jennifer, she'd been corresponding with Mr. Online Dating Guy for several weeks and when they finally met, it was clear he lied about his age (she's 41, he said he was 48, he was actually 61). When he asked her the next day --via text-- if he scared her away, she said it concerned her that he lied because she values honesty. Apparently the dude went from gentleman to you-know-what in 0.5 seconds and proceeded to text her a series of nasty messages. The moral? Don't spend too much online time with strangers you want to meet, and certainly don't while away the hours conjuring up future fantasies about your potential love mate until you've actually met IRL! Clearly you want to see if there's chemistry, and you have to find out if they're really telling the truth... otherwise it can turn into a major time suck.
As my friend would say, he's a RTBS.
Erin

I'm absolutely thrilled to announce that after 6 months of hard work, my team and I have launched the new and improved NetLingo website! We converted the old Cold Fusion site to a PHP environment, complete with custom CMS and 4 Word of the Day newsletters. PLEASE CHECK IT OUT AND TELL YOUR FRIENDS ;-) http://www.netlingo.com

There's several more features on their way, due to be released over the next 2-3 months, including our "Get With The Program" for parents series, our "Add Your Own Lingo" and become a wiki editor initiative, and back by popular demand our "Gifts for Geeks" online store with gadgets and gizmos that are all the rage.

Be sure to Sign Up for any or all of the Newsletters: You can get business terms, technology terms, cyber jargon terms, or the acronym of the day. It's an easy way to learn a little bite size chunck each day!

Congratulations to Chip of ExpertHost (for putting up with me during this trying time) and his team of programmers! I'm so very grateful.

TISC,
Erin

It's official, technology is slowly killing romance. And many are ready to hit "delete." Take Natalie, she had a boyfriend who was Mr. Text-o-Rama. He never wanted to talk, but he always wanted to text. A flirtatious text here and there is fine, but a text of more than 100 characters? Overkill. "Good morning" or short texts during the day are fine but receiving one at 7pm asking "How are you?" is a chicken way of saying "I want to talk to you without actually calling." There are some texting rules for dating: Don't flirt too long virtually; if someone doesn't text you back in 24 hours it's not happening; only cowards settle arguments via text, and text breakups don't count. And yes, "I love you" is fine -- but only if you've already said those words in person. Read more here...

<3
Erin