Sex Object

Secondary question for extra credit: Is sex with robots actually ethical? As in, if the robots have indeed been programmed to do "anything you want us to", does that actually qualify as consent?

Oh. This was not intended for ILE, it was intended for ILM, but I guess here it is.

Its a world issue.

He doesn't want to, but he can't help it.

Eh, I'd ask to move it but the only mod who's ever remotely well-disposed towards me was last seen yesterday on a train heading into the Black Forest.

Just reminds me of the olden days before ILX had a search function where we had to assign threads to categories? And some of them were Tom's and fairly self-explanatory "classic or dud" or "Taking Sides: FITE!" but then the rest were these inscrutable Eno-esque koans of Mark S. I remember when I had the job of filing uncategorised threads into those categories; that was really fun.

Anyway I think he does; I think the song is him being irritated that the person does not consider him a sex object. But I might have been lead astray by Flür's misdirection.

Also I can never quite decide if this is one of their best basslines or their worst. (I just hate the production on this album so much.)

he says he doesn't want to be your sex obJECT, but he never says anything about being anyone's sex OBject.

he keeps repeating the line that he does not want to be a sex object, yet every other line in the song indicates that he would actually really really like to have sex with the person he is singing to

I can imagine wanting to have sex with someone while simultaneously not wanting to be treated by that person during sex as the equivalent of a dildo, which is an actual sex object. You could set fire to one and it would not complain; it would just smell bad.

Is sex with robots actually ethical?

At present, any robot you could have sex with would be the equivalent of a dildo or inflatable doll with a vinyl vagina, so it wouldn't pose an ethical dilemma in terms of consent. Robots that might pose such an ethical dilemma are purely imaginary and thus do not "actually" pose such an ethical dilemma.

Your turn.

The further that AI advances, the closer machines get to intelligence or at least imagination (thinking deep dream, rather than the mannequins) the more this raises issues of, a machine that has something approaching sentience, would that machine be capable of granting consent?

There have been a ton of films around this topic recently so I don't think it's an unreasonable or theoretical question to ask.

*overly theoretical

can robo-Ralf be reprogrammed?

Can a programmed object have free will?

So, could the robot Ralf decide, independently, to reissue the first three albums?

Ethical or not, I wish the robot technology would get a bloody move on tbh. I think it's been promised for the last 20 years or so.

Sounds ideal to me - although I think you'd probably want to be sure there was an element of unpredictability build into the circuitry to keep things interesting.

The best way I can make sense of your extra-credit question would be to rephrase it to ask: which traits found in humans would need to be present in a robot in order for us to be ethically required to seek that robot's consent before engaging in sex with it?

What makes this an interesting, but very dangerous, ethical question is that it could easily be reversed to argue that a lack of similar traits in a human would qualify that human for sexual abuse without their consent. Because some humans are infants, I think you'd need to be very cautious in answering this.

I doubt Kraftwerk had any of this in mind when they wrote that song though.

TBH, I think these are exactly the kind of questions Kraftwerk *were* posing in their songs, but that might just be me.

I mean, obviously, the first time I heard it, I thought the apparent meaning was something like what Aimless describes: that he wants a *relationship* with the "you" of the song, rather than being treated as an object used only for sex, turned on and discarded at will.

But lately I re-read Flür's book (and a tonne of other interviews, and Publikation, etc) and that thing that Flür said stuck with me: "Why did he say that? Of course he *wanted* to be." And Flür was talking about how all the songs on that album are indicative the relationships *within* the band, that they had drifted apart, couldn't communicate or reach one another. Then re-reading Flür's book, I'm just aware of this constant undercurrent through the book, of Flür belittling Hütter's masculinity, questioning his prowess, making snide comments about what a terrible partner he was to his girlfriends. There's this passage where he's describing how they went to a club together, and Hütter was trying to pick up girls who were all flocking to Flür instead. Like, Hütter wanted to be the leader of the band, and thought he should be the most desirable member, but clearly he wasn't; Flür was. And the song is full of *that* kind of tension.

Or I could be massively projecting, in terms of that interpretation of the song. (Though I'm not projecting about the rivalry and weird tension between Hütter and Flür, that's all over the whole book. Unless it's entirely possible that Flür wrote Hütter as a sex flop in his book as revenge or something.)

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/8/please-dont-have-sex-with-robots.html

^^^this was the article that got me thinking, with regards to contemplating sex with Die Menschmaschine, where the ethical line between Mensch and Maschine lies with regards to consent.

As the article states, it seems self-evident that creating a robot as humanlike as possible, including the ability for a human to engage in sex with it, would only be pursued so that humans definitely would have sex with it. Allowing the robot to have the right to refuse sex or to choose another lover it prefers would defeat the obvious underlying purpose of creating a sex slave which can be bought and sold or abused in any way the owner desires. Which is exactly what makes this theme so attractive in fiction.

But sex slavery is already so widespread without sentient robots that imagining robot sex is only a way of sanitizing the issue to make it more socially acceptable to publically talk about what it all means. Any discussion about sex with super-advanced robots is ipso facto a discussion about sexual relations among real humans.

I really struggle with this aspect of conversations on ILX:

That I pose a question about an imaginary scenario of X, and ask questions about the possibility or ethics of X, only to have people come in and tell me "Oh no, you cannot possibly talking about X, you are talking about Y" and proceed to talk about Y and tell me I intended Y, when I know very clearly in my mind what I intended, and I intended to talk about the hypothetical and imaginary situation of X. I don't know why you guys do this, if it's a lack of imagination or something, but I find this frustrating.

That is what kind of bothered me about that article, and why it's stayed with me. That it was saying that it was wrong of humans to want to have sex with robots, because sex with robots implied domination and therefore degradation.

But the thing is, I don't think that humans will ever stop wanting to have sex with robots, for the same reason that humans would want to have sex with space aliens - having sex with other-classes-of-sentient-life is a form of human communication, and has been since we were interbreeding with Neanderthals. I don't think that urge is going to go away.

But it's this idea of linking sex-with-robots as being *inherently* filled with domination, and therefore degradation that troubles me. It springs from this idea that sex is inherently an aggressive display done *by* someone (usually coded male) *to* something (usually coded female). And I'm not trying to discuss sex slavery in human beings, I'm trying to think of ways of making robots able to consent.

Because I am 99.99999% certain that the actual Ralf Hütter would never in a million years have sex with me. But a Robo-Ralf could be programmed not just to have sex with me, but to enjoy it, could be programmed to find me attractive and be programmed in advance to believe that sex with people like me was desirable and provide a programmed response not just of consent, but enthusiastic consent, on those grounds. It's the most twisted kind of fantasy - sex with robots is not programming someone who has no choice. It's programming a robot that *chooses* you. But is that an electronic form of grooming? Because I don't believe that it inherently *has* to be domination. That's the problem with treating this question like the "what about a pig that was bred to want to be eaten?" conundrum. Being eaten is not an inherently desirable option, it's something most sentient creatures avoid. But being on the *receiving* as opposed to the transmitting end of sex (to try and get away from the domination/submission model) ... it's not asking "can you program a pig that wants to be eaten" it's about asking "can you program a sex robot that wants to be penetrated" - to me, a natural human model of sexuality is one that embraces the idea that being on the "receiving" end of sex can and should be as pleasurable as being on the "dominating" end.

What would it mean for robot consent, if a robot *wanted* to be... had-sex-with?

I know I am expressing this incredibly badly, and I apologise for that. But there's really something in the model of that article that bothers me and I'm trying to think my way through it.

More field research needed here, but in your theoretical example:

- Has Ralf licensed his likeness to be used or otherwise given his consent for the Ralf-bot? There's an ethical dimension to this as well?

- Is this an exclusive relationship?

- what working definition of sex are we using ? (I thought the article had some issues here)

https://steelbeneaththeskin.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/robby-the-robot.jpg

I think there is a big gap to be noted between a robot that is like Sean Young from Blade Runner and a Robby The Robot style robot. Like if someone wanted to have sex w a robot that looked felt and acted like a human in every way, do they really want to have sex with a robot? Or isn't that just a substitute for another human, only one they can control? If the robot takes on the physical characteristics of a human sexual being, or is a cyborg made from human parts, it should be in a separate category from people that want to fuck their washing machine or something.

https://vimeo.com/12915013

important viewing ott

if you wanted to factor out dominance then at the very least you'd have to design the robot to gain something from the interaction maybe? some kind of pleasure receptor? also the robot wd have to be self-powering and not rely on a human "master" to plug it in or carry out other essential care functions

It springs from this idea that sex is inherently an aggressive display done *by* someone (usually coded male) *to* something (usually coded female).

I would not agree with this conclusion. Consenting sex that physically expresses one's affectionate feelings for one's sexual partner most certainly doesn't need to be "an aggressive display". It can be slow, sweet and very loving.

But when two humans are involved, that loving relationship presumes a voluntary emotional attachment which derives meaning and value largely because it is freely chosen and freely given. That freedom is measured by the ability of the other to say 'no', to refuse, to change their mind or their heart, or to leave to follow a new path away from you. If a robot is programmed to choose you, then in my view that outcome was controlled and dictated by your desire and by your choice and was not the action of your equal in any meaningful way.

being on the "receiving" end of sex can and should be as pleasurable as being on the "dominating" end

If what makes the relationship ethical can be measured solely in terms of the pleasure taken in it by all parties, then I'd agree that a robot could be programmed to experience some analog to pleasure in engaging in sex with you and by that yardstick, instantly becomes ethical. But again, that pleasure is a foregone conclusion, and you could as easily program it experience pleasure from any stimulus whatsoever.

Imagine an audience of robots that always laughed uproariously at all your jokes, even when you didn't find them funny. It wouldn't be that the robots didn't find your joke funny and were pretending to enjoy them. They'd be programmed to feel huge mirth. But it would be an extremely sad sight for anyone who understood what was happening.

hey branwell:
https://twitter.com/geetadayal/status/631224784605425664

Look I don't know about you but I get a very strong feeling that it would definitely be unethical to ask Geeta to ask Ralf Hütter if having sex with his robotic replica would be ethical. I can't imagine any scenario where that isn't uncomfortable for everyone!

Also I just got this mental flash of Data from Star Trek saying "I am fully programmed for all pleasure functions."

...but there was this whole 70s sub-genre of disco songs about having sex with robots (Automatic Lover springs to mind but I know I've had this discussion before and there were others.)

http://www.theonion.com/blogpost/we-need-a-fourth-law-of-robotics-stop-fingering-my-11148

(was only joking btw, you know that though of course) xps

No, that was Interpol with the fingerbanging (insert Deutschebank reference here) not robots.

I am obsessed with this song and no one wants to talk about how great it is.

(Is it the only song that features collaboration with someone from "outside" the band? Certainly the only song with a female collaborator.)

tbh i suspect ralf would handle that question with great aplomb

Hmmm.

I'm not sure it matters whether he would *handle* it with aplomb, but more whether it's an OK question to ask in the first place? If it were possible to ask in the same spirit of playfulness, teasing and fun that the thread was conceived, he might be amused by it, and talk about robot antics. But I know Geeta said it was going to be a telephone interview, so that it might not be possible to convey the playful tone without body-language and other meta-text.

I haven't spoken much to Geeta since she left ILX so it might be a definitely odd question for *me* to pose her, y'know? I am more worried about offending her than I am about offending Ralf or Robo-Ralf tbh.

Oh, sod it. Life's too short, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aYMnLlzVZI

Coming back to Aimless's long post here:

But when two humans are involved, that loving relationship presumes a voluntary emotional attachment which derives meaning and value largely because it is freely chosen and freely given. That freedom is measured by the ability of the other to say 'no', to refuse, to change their mind or their heart, or to leave to follow a new path away from you. If a robot is programmed to choose you, then in my view that outcome was controlled and dictated by your desire and by your choice and was not the action of your equal in any meaningful way.

The more I read this, the odder it seems. Because there is lots and lots of sex in the human world that does not conform to this rather idealistic set of standards. There is, as before, sex as communication, sex as relief of bodily urges, sex as a transaction. And lots of people do not like to talk about sex as transaction, because it raises even more thorny issues than sex with robots.

I realise now that the ethical quandary here is not about "sex slavery"; it is about sex work. "Ya tvoy sluga; Ya tvoy rabotnik" is very clearly setting the parameters of the relations. The robot is a servant, a worker. We are talking about prostitution and we are talking about workers' rights here.

Soldering a rampant rabbit onto Robo-Ralf or the Florimatic-2000 would be grade-school engineering, but the issue about whether it is OK to employ a robot for sex does not just raise issues about whether it is OK to employ humans for sex. It raises issues about whether it is OK to force semi-sentient robots to do anything - whether that's build cars, sort Google's images or perform the greatest hits of Kraftwerk at the Tate. It is not just sex-worker robots that would be slaves; it is *all* robots.

So it does kind of come back to another current controversy, which is about sex worker rights. It's not about whether Robo-Ralf enjoys his work (or is indeed programmed to) but whether he has freedom from mistreatment, freedom from exploitation and the right to recourse should his working conditions be dangerous. (I don't believe that sex work is inherently unethical; I believe that the illegal form of sex work within a patriarchal society deliberately creates dangerous conditions in order to control and exploit women, gender minorities and homosexuals. Are robots to be added to classes of those patriarchy considers "non-human" humans to be exploited in this way?)

So I guess whether or not it's ethical to have sex with Robo-Ralf is not about whether he enjoys it (he can after all be programmed to enjoy it!) but about the conditions in which he is kept, whether he is satisfied with the treatment (i.e. it is not acceptable to turn a robot on and then forget about him, leave him with his pleasure circuitry all humming away; this is cruelty to robots, and should be prevented) and whether he has the ability to bargain collectively for better remuneration (if he wants a surge protector for his batteries because the power supply in my part of London is so unreliable) or conditions.

I think I have been working on databases for too long to even be seriously considering this.

NV, I'm at home on my shitty old laptop (my laptop would definitely tell Robo-Ralf "Run away! Run away! she is terrible to computers!") so I can't read embedded videos. What is it?

Linnea Olsson playing a lovely cover of "Sex Object" on cello and sampled loops

think you're right that whatever passes for "free will" in roboterms wd be beyond simple reciprocity of pleasure and more a case of the robot being free to choose not to participate - which wd mean freedom from dependence on any particular human mastress - which obv casts all sorts of reflections back on human sexuality & sex work anyway

The whole point of having sex with a robot is the idea of someone who is not just performing emotional labour, but having sex with someone who does not *have* feelings. In that case, the robot is free to choose to perform the sex act based on other considerations.

But also Sex Object is a weird song in the Kraftwerk oeuvre because human-Ralf suggests, after years of depersonalisation, hey, robots might have feelings too?

i feel like a robot as a robot isn't even really existentially free to refuse participation? in a way that humans theoretically are?

also in the song all that "yes" "no" "maybe" suggests a) some kind of binary-esque process for self-determination and b) one of those magic 8-balls or the toy plastic robot with the magnet underneath that spins round to point at ouija board answers

Forget sex work, can the robots even quit Kraftwerk the way the Muzikarbeiters did?

thinking about the importance of saying "no" in child development and how to work out the concept of robots that can refuse their robotitude and would that be programmed?

I love the fact that it's Yes / No / Maybe / Perhaps, not just to fit the meter of the song, but also to suggest that not only is there an uncertainty beyond a binary (your good old NULL value in programming) but that uncertainty might itself be binary or even multiple.

In the song itself, the binary of Y / N is interrupted by the sudden introduction of the "Why?" which is a very un-computer question to ask. (Female humans do not act like computers, they pose the existential "Why?" question instead of just responding Y / N to propositions.)

(There are definitely different orders of uncertainties like there are different orders of infinities.)

I wonder if we're looking too deeply, and missing a more obvious interpretation? Could he not be singing as a human? i.e. he perceives that he is being treated as a sex object by his own robot. (What are the ethics of being harassed by your robot for sex and dealing with that)?

"Why?"

Which reminds me (of):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2P-aCYfHCc

Karl Bartos' Elektric Music "Baby Come Back"

Branwell are you aware of this? Äkta Människor a.k.a. Real Humans a.k.a. Humans on Channel 4

Cos it seems like it might be RIGHT up your street. Being, essentially, Kraftwerk Robots The Mini Series.

Thanks for the rec; but I basically gave up on trying to understand or keep up with television a long time ago. Is it fiction or a documentary about real robots?

Elvis Telecom told me to check out The Silver Metal Lover by Tanith Lee which seems entirely ~relevant to my interests~ right now regarding robot musician sex.

(p.s. Happy Birthday Ralf)

And many more!

And Dave Brock as well!

Blimey.

DRÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖHN

http://41.media.tumblr.com/24bb82fd0f8be279adfd2ff337f9ad27/tumblr_n1gh16ud981ritsqio3_1280.jpg

Florian's sheet music. I just love him so much. Synthi instructions: *small drawing of a bat*

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Hi System. I forgot I made this a poll.

https://38.media.tumblr.com/c2071a8088184311dfe25f65562668f6/tumblr_nthtf0ELtK1toqgoto1_400.gif

^^^the most offensive thing I have ever seen on Tumblr.

Virtual Rollercoaster

I've banned myself from listening to any more Kraftwerk today (NEU! and La Düsseldorf and solo projects also included in ban) because even I'm starting to get concerned about this single-mindedness. I need to convince my poor brain that other things in life that are not Kraftwerk can also be interesting. (It's a hard sell right now.)

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

My favourite living linguist gets into problematising the language of robot sex:

https://debuk.wordpress.com/2015/09/12/the-fembots-of-ashley-madison/

(Still, rather annoyingly assumes that the sexbots are "female" and the users are "male"?)

((I would actually imagine that stereotypical "male" language would be easier to program than language, as described, with traditionally "female" markers?))

You should def write that one, btw.

Meanwhile, the BBC weighs in here...

https://campaignagainstsexrobots.wordpress.com/

Why is it that it feels like the people campaigning against sex robots have the most terrible, negative, pessimistic view of sex. (There's a lot of rhetorical overlap with anti-sex worker rhetoric which makes me v v uncomfortable.)

can't say I care if people want to fuck a bunch of wires and plastic but it's def not something I would ever be interested in

http://40.media.tumblr.com/27cf820554a2fc7163b41dd9b26c3c4b/tumblr_nuwwdb3PJe1ucnqouo1_500.jpg

Why is it that it feels like the people campaigning against sex robots have the most terrible, negative, pessimistic view of sex.

i haven't read the whole of their site but doesn't it come down to a negative view of power relationships?

not that you're rong, i think blanket pessimism re: sex is depressing.

but i get the (misguided?) desire to escape power...even if it does lead them to a sterile puritanism

They are super-anti-sex-work, right in their mission statement. Sex with robots is bad because:

https://campaignagainstsexrobots.wordpress.com/about/

The vision for sex robots is underscored by reference to prostitute-john exchange which relies on recognizing only the needs and wants of the buyers of sex, the sellers of sex are not attributed subjectivity and reduced to a thing (just like the robot).

That is not commonly the way that buyer-seller relations are depicted in other forms of labour. It's the writers of this statement that are reducing the sex worker to a "thing"; not the actual exchange of labour for money. In other exchanges, workers are recognised as having rights and the buyers of labour are recognised as having responsibilities. Why not sex work? Oh right, generally because it's criminalised and workers have no recourse when their rights are abused.

Why is it that sex labour (and often other forms of emotional labour) are held to be somehow... *not* labour? There's this weird doublethink going on whereby sex is either A) this quasi-magical mystical emotional union between two souls who ~love each other very much~ or else B) this degrading brutal thing that "Men" do to "Women". Like, these are the only two options available.

Looking at sex robots as a labour issue... (assuming that sex work is viewed as work, and emotional labour as labour that can be bought and sold as any other form of labour) Why were robots even invented in the first place? To perform labour that was too dangerous, too strenuous, too repetitive for human beings. (Also, robots don't form unions like those pesky human auto workers.) if you're howling about the poor robots that might be sexually mistreated, why aren't you howling about the bomb-exploding worker robots that get blown up when clearing landmines?

And from another tack.. who *are* the current market for non-robotic sex dolls? I honestly don't know here. Is it criminals and violent offenders? Is it sad and awkward gross old dudes who can't attract girlfriends and are afraid of the legal penalties for buying sex? Is it young women who buy rampant rabbits to quench the occasional thirst because dudes are gross and entitled? You wanna know what a sure way to introduce a criminal element to a labour market is: criminalise it. You wanna make sure that AI is only used for the most wretched of sex work? Remove the legal uses.

These people are gross. I hate their view of the world. I hate their view of sex. I hate *their* view of sex workers as things, rather than as people. I also hate the heteronormativity of assuming that only women (or sometimes children) ever perform sex work, but hey, that's another kettle of fish.

Florian says...

http://twingokraftwerk.com/news/20060402-wdrtv-krautundruben/1991KraftwerkTheRobotsPromo01-twingo.jpg

ROBOT ARMS ARE FOR HUGGING.

yeah i didn't see the immediate connection between anti-sex robot and anti-sex worker but that statement couldn't be more steeped in anti-sex worker rhetoric. tho tbh i'm just really confused as how anyone could work up a moral fervour about the question of robot sex.

i don't think of labour as a freely chosen, mutually beneficial transaction really but yeah there's no reason why sexual/emotional labour shd be treated separately to the rest of it

it does seem a bit odd to me how a lot of pro-sex worker arguments have a strong tinge of that kind of liberalism to them, but maybe making the argument that all work is terrible including sex work but this doesn't mean working conditions and safety shouldn't be improved isn't going to fly outside of shirker communist circles

"All work is terrible" therefore, let's have labour laws and employment tribunals, etc. is the valid logic here. People mostly agree that conditions in sweatshops are terrible, but the moral position is: put pressure on retailers to source more ethical suppliers. Very few people are making a genuine argument that we should ban garment workers and everyone should wear only clothes knitted for them ~with love~

But it just shows how SWERF logic just does not hold up when examined.

God we're gonna need a new acronym for Robot-Exclusionary RF''s. Damn RERFs keeping me from sexy funtimes with Herr Robo-Ralf.

Keep out the rerf ralf

Raggy?

I would have got away with it if it wasn't for those damn kids!

lol

Das Geheimnis Maschine

✓

Funnily enough I've got a photo of eine Geheimnis Maschine with an ex-member of Kraftwerk around here somewhere...

http://1.1.1.5/bmi/filtermagazine.com/images/uploads/benjamin-curtis-michael-rother-josh-klinghoffer-ATP-2005(2).jpg

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/8d/ab/8c/8dab8cc28af9c585c1023ff62100e182.jpg

http://storyboardsecrets.com/blogspot/26e3e880e6a8_CEE2/Facebook-Wolverton-Robot-Woman-Weird-Mysteries-002-1_cr_thumb.jpg

Man, I am just cranky as heck today and in order to de-crankify myself clearly I need photos of das Sex Objekt

https://41.media.tumblr.com/56529712ffbd3f5bd883ed743187f144/tumblr_nvtxuxVyii1qbmupoo7_1280.jpg

I am not sure when I started fancying septuagenarian Germans with faces like potatoes and strange dye jobs but what makes you happy makes you happy so why should you not preserve the little happiness there is in the world. Oh Ralf you adorkable nerd.

Cranky me before looking at pictures of Kraftwerk:

https://38.media.tumblr.com/d24ef4ee5b62d8da5079c9e32205fd72/tumblr_nte7bvC45f1shxh5xo1_400.gif

Me after looking at pictures of Kraftwerk:

https://38.media.tumblr.com/bb4752fe30b95ce7b7a20218a453c347/tumblr_nte7bvC45f1shxh5xo2_400.gif

Yes.

He is looking well on it.

(What "it" is, ymmv, etc)

Thank god for Tumblr memes.

http://41.media.tumblr.com/a5332e9267f364f933097a71b9a8d3fa/tumblr_nvyu816U0b1qm9sieo1_1280.png

lol

I imagine actual Ralf's actual front sitting room looks pretty similar.

https://40.media.tumblr.com/f8661459f586a1493542bc6b34be7f1f/tumblr_nwmicboMBW1rjw8sqo1_400.png

Look, Ralf has put it in writing: the robots are responsible for groupies.

How do I become a groupie?

Lookit this disgustingly geriatric sex objekt with his crepey skin and his old man jowls and his annoyingly perky blue eyes and his freckles and when did I start fancying old men but uuuuhhhhhhhhhh

http://40.media.tumblr.com/ff9e9bab54fc40cb33c88988a7ee61b2/tumblr_ny2e66nrjp1rjw8sqo1_540.png

LOOKIT HIM. LOOK. AT. HIM.

http://40.media.tumblr.com/f3f2b425d74ce1928b176ab135687217/tumblr_ny2e66nrjp1rjw8sqo2_1280.png

Oughtn't to be allowed. Being so sexy at his age, good god there should be a law against that or something. Besmirching my good pure mind with his filth. Make it stop.

I am aware that Ralf has feelings on this.

https://36.media.tumblr.com/eada5a57a766300fd3a7fcb4ae6e0d35/tumblr_ny148rGzSU1qkx7ifo1_540.jpg

https://40.media.tumblr.com/0b7358dcea8e4b2e9a87268997c559fe/tumblr_ny482p1s7i1rjw8sqo4_1280.jpg

^^^^sheer pornography

https://41.media.tumblr.com/7eb9dd224b6e19232701714d1baa134c/tumblr_ny482p1s7i1rjw8sqo5_1280.jpg

I can't cope with the sex objectification on display here.

*explodes in giant ball of attempting to lick the screen*

wow awesome

jesus

The rest of the interview is just Ralf being typical "Ja it is difficult to play with click but we merge with our machines I think soon" Ralf but mine eyes nearly popped out of my head when I saw that!

BRB; rebuilding Klingklang in my basement.

But the funny thing is, since I posted it, Tumblr keeps showing me the post and suggesting I follow myself?

Oh, nice article, thanks.

BRB; rebuilding Klingklang in my basement

Build some of these while you're at it:

http://www.google.com/patents/USD244717?cl=en
Electronic percussion musical instrument
US patent US D244717 S
Filing date Jul 10, 1975
Inventors Florian Schneider, Ralf Hutter
(just the layout is patented, no functional details)

http://www.google.com/patents/EP0396141A2?cl=en
System for and method of synthesizing singing in real time
European patent EP 0396141 A2
Filing date May 3, 1990
Inventors Florian Schneider, Gert Joachim Ott, Gert Jalass
(circuit diagrams! for midifying a Votrax speech synthesiser or uh sth)

Aaah, the Singing Typewriter one I've seen before. But not the drum pads ones that Wolfgang says he invented and they stole from him.

Thank you for this!

I know German is a funny language but the idea that Ralf lived on "animal garden" street* makes me laugh probably far more than it should.

*yes I know it means "zoo"

Awwwww, Ralf-paws.

Things I have open in adjacent tabs:

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/what-would-sex-robots-for-women-look-like

What Would Sex Robots For Women Look Like?

Next tab:

http://media.gettyimages.com/photos/photo-of-ralf-hutter-and-florian-schneider-and-kraftwerk-florian-and-picture-id85853934

Yes.

nice pic