Hindsight · review build · data not yet validated

Virtual sexual encounters

Ray Kurzweil, Books and essays, 1999, published 1999-01

People have sexual experiences at a distance with other persons as well as virtual partners.

Verdict

hitThe two blind graders disagreed (A: miss, B: hit). A third agent settled it (D20).

Grader A: miss

Under the book's reading (virtual-reality and haptic sex with remote persons and virtual partners), this was a niche in 2009: adult regions in Second Life hosted avatar sex, but Second Life peaked at about 88,000 concurrent users, and tactile environments did not exist (see 072). Text, phone and webcam cybersex were older and more common, but those are not what the claim describes.

Test: At least 20% of adults having VR-mediated sexual experiences with remote persons or virtual partners: well under 5% in 2009 and 2014.

Second Life (Wikipedia) (retrieved 2026-09): Adult regions permit overt sexual activity; peak concurrency 88,200 in 2009.
Haptic technology (Wikipedia) (retrieved 2026-09): No full tactile environments existed before 2010.

Grader B: hit

Remote and virtual sexual activity existed in 2009 (webcam sex, cybersex, avatar sex in Second Life adult regions).

Test: Existence test: practiced by 2009.

Wikipedia: Second Life (accessed 2026-09-28): Launched 2003; peak concurrency 88,200 in Q1 2009; adult regions host avatar sexual activity.

All captured fields

rank: 74
kind: decade_prediction
section: Communication
subject: Virtual sexual encounters
target year: 2009
timing: in
position: Chapter 9, "2009"; item Communication 17 in Kurzweil 2010, p. 63
confidence: high
note: Wording as reproduced by the author in "How My Predictions Are Faring" (2010); book page not given there. Subject label is the essay's own item heading.