Re: Telepresence Robots
"The real revolution in the sex market was caused by remotes, or "empties," dolls also fashioned in the image of humans but brainless, brainless not in a pejorative sense but literally: the remote woman and the remote man were empty shells operated at a distance by humans.
By putting on a suit that pressed hundreds of electrodes to the skin, anyone could link with a male or female remote. Little did people dream how this technology would change their lives, especially their sex lives. From marriage to the oldest profession in the world. The courts were faced with unprecedented problems, legal dilemmas. The law didn't recognize intimate relations with a doll as grounds for divorce. Whether stuffed or inflated by a bicycle pump, whether with automatic transmission or without, it didn't matter; that was no more adultery than if a person was cohabiting with a chest of drawers. But teleferic products forced judges to determine whether or not a married individual entering into a liaison with a male remote or a female remote was thereby committing adultery. The concept of "remote adultery" was the subject of heated debate not only in the legal journals but also in the daily press. And adultery was just the tip of the iceberg. Can you deceive your wife, for example, with her own self but younger?"
"... phenomenon called teleferic piggybacking -- because a remote, too, can put on an electrode suit and operate another remote, and so on ad infinitum. The idea was received with enthusiasm by the underworld, because it is as easy to find the operator of a remote as it is to locate a radio transmitter. The police had no problem solving teleferic burglaries and murders. But if the perpetrator remote was operated by another remote, by the time you got to the second remote the criminal, the human, had broken radio contact with his "middleman" and left no clues."
From: Peace on Earth, by Stanislaw Lem.
... and it goes on and on. I find it amazing how Lem was able to see the ethical and legal implications of many technologies long before they even existed. He should really be a required reading in all engineering and science schools.