Would you make out with a machine?

As soon as we got an internet to send email, pictures and eventually video, people started using it to get their rocks off, send titillating texts and cybersex was immediately invented.

While the genre of web-gratification has remained constant and strong since the advent of this form of communication, certain aspects of it have always been lacking. For instance, there’s no real way to make out over the internet, or we’d all probably be doing it right now. But a new invention seeks to bridge that gap and allow for virtual spit swapping between two interested parties. (And kisses can be recorded, which is actually a wee bit sad, but the functionality is there.)

The Kajimoto Laboratory at the University of Electro-Communications has developed a not very romantic sounding “Kiss Transmission Device,” enabling the sensations of tonsil hockey to be transmitted over the web:

“If you take one device in your mouth and turn it with your tongue, the other device turns in the same way,” says the device’s inventor in a YouTube video. “If you turn it back the other way, then your partner’s turns back the same way, so your partner’s device turns whichever way your own device turns.”

The makeout machine is currently in the prototype stage, but it certainly holds promise for long distance relationships- if of course, the parties are imaginative, as it “currently resembles a breathalyzer crossed with a motorized toothbrush.” Later versions of the device will perhaps remedy some of the less-tactile aspects of kissing a device, not a person:

“The elements of a kiss include the sense of taste, the manner of breathing, and the moistness of the tongue. If we can recreate all of those I think it will be a really powerful device,” he explains in the video.

Would you utilize such an innovation in the absence of contact? Is this creepy or cute?