Commentary

Sideswipes: We're Doing Pretty Good On Digital Sex - Now We Just Need Intimacy

The Wired issue you've been waiting for debuted this month…  if you've been waiting for a heads-up about how we're doing on sex in the digital age. The issue isn't for everyone, I'll admit, but if you happen to be a person who has been wondering like I have how we ended up with so much connectivity yet so little intimacy, the issue has a lot to say.
 
The articles in the Sex Issue are subtle answers to why we don't talk openly or well about intimacy today. For example in Bypassing the Rational, a photographer shoots full-body nudes of men and women in a blurry way so we can't see the goodies on anyone but we get the idea the goodies are there. The photos feel very intimate -- but are they intimate at all, really?
 
If a reader wanted to, she could use these photos to ask why our very intimate fascination with bodies isn't something we talk openly about in society. Could there be some answers there to why we also don't talk openly about intimacy often or well today?
 
Whether or not a reader chooses to use the articles in the Sex Issue to answer questions about intimacy in society at large, the clearest thing the articles in the Sex Issue point out is what society is into right now in terms of sex. Here's what that is: Thinking differently about sex. The contents of the Sex Issue appear to be curated in order to introduce you to what you don't already know from fetish culture to emerging sexual identities. That's pretty interesting as a map-making exercise where we all get on a similar geography.
 
Our next step is to sink to the depths of that geography in order to report how it feels down there. How sex in the digital age feels is an intimate conversation our society could do with more often and more openly.

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EGO – Klaus Obermaier with Stefano D'Alessio & Martina Menegon from Klaus Obermaier on Vimeo.

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