Pornography's dirty tech secret
It’s the secret that’s not a secret. Everybody seems to know it, but nobody wants to say it: Pornography has been a massively powerful driver of advances in communication.
It has been called the dirty secret of the VCR, which might never have seen mainstream success had pornography consumers not embraced its privacy-enhancing nature. It’s the dirty secret of cable television, whose initial market depended heavily on consumers paying to have pornography piped into their homes. The dirty secret of YouTube and CNN.com, which are built on streaming-video technology first developed by pornographers. Of eBay and PayPal, both beneficiaries of the pornography industry’s pioneering efforts to develop e-commerce and to commercialize the Internet.
The dirty secret of photography, microfilm, video-on-demand, Internet bandwidth, BBS’s, chat rooms, virtual worlds, webcams, smartphones. The list goes on.
“It's past time someone told that story,” a software engineer and entrepreneur said to me recently. “I remember a couple of years ago when I visited a friend at Google and saw the unfiltered search strings: about 75% of all searches are searches for porn.”
Porn’s influence is both blatant, and blatantly ignored.
Leave for a moment the question of why such a powerful force of technological advance remains so hidden. Consider how it remains hidden.
Marketers and web developers I have spoken to say that working in pornography gives them a reputation for being ahead of the curve. Nevertheless, when they decide to apply to a mainstream tech company, these people tend to scrub their pornographic credentials. Stigma outweighs mystique.
The same pattern happens with technologies themselves: Typically, pornography has greatest influence early in the life of a new technology — it was initially crucial to the VCR, for instance, but ultimately the technology developed enough of a mainstream market for a company like Blockbuster to thrive (until recently) without dealing in porn. Similarly, Steve Jobs can ban pornographic apps from the iPhone only because the Internet technologies on which it relies have matured to the point where the mainstream can sustain it.
The “dirty secret” is applied retroactively — the pornographic elements are scrubbed from the media history.
“Hypocrisy!” cry pornography insiders. “Far from eschewing porn, Steve Jobs should shake hand with pornography industry leaders and thank them personally for their decades of technological trailblazing.”
I see it differently. True, the role of pornography is too big to ignore, but those who affect willful blindness are not necessarily hypocrites. This is a subject that makes many people genuinely uncomfortable. Many smart people honestly worry that acknowledging the relationship between pornography and technology legitimizes the product and undermines valid concerns about sexism, exploitation and violence.
I grapple with this myself. I know, though, that the ugly aspects of pornography coexist with its influence on technology. Neither diminishes the other. This uneasy juxtaposition might make people uncomfortable, but facing this “secret” directly is the only way to understand honestly how the tools and techniques of mass communication developed.
Patchen Barss is the author of The Erotic Engine, How Pornography Powered Mass Communication from Gutenberg to Google.
Comments
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Posted by: Nathan | Dec 12, 2010 4:58:03 AM
Very interesting. Doesn't effect me though, I don't watch porn :)
Posted by: Wiseguy | Dec 12, 2010 10:34:53 AM
did you even read the article
Posted by: Mariospants | Dec 12, 2010 3:20:24 PM
Pornography, schmornography, it was an enabler, for sure, but tech innovation follows where the eyeballs (and the wallets) are. Planned obscolence and video games drove the underlying technologies that made those porn-pumping innovations possible.
Posted by: jarad | Dec 13, 2010 6:31:11 PM
Innovation happens due to the need or want and the available dollars to go with it. Porn just so happens to be wanted everywhere and the amount people are willing to pay is astronomical.
Posted by: Steve | Dec 16, 2010 5:09:58 AM
It is sad but typical that the author tied " sexism, exploitation and violence" to pornography. They are no more related to pornography than they are to the written word, music or 'mainstream' cinema. If people would grow up they would realize that without sexuality humanity is doomed. Sex is a basic human need just as food is. Sadly there is a greater selection of food outlets (from Vending machines & Mc Donalds --> Personal Chef's) than there is for sexual fulfillment. Most peoples sexual fulfillment comes from the Vending machine/McDonalds of life (hence their shame of sexuality).
Posted by: Dumbfks | Dec 31, 2010 2:54:27 AM
The only reason pornographic material rules, is because males without confidence, purpose and pride, lack the knowledge of how to obtain real relationships from those who they desire.
Hence they lack the ability, and personality, and any personal interspection, which is what makes the person, interesting, and worthy.
They also lack the ability to obtain knowledge in areas that would create great sexual relationships with those persons of substance, because they lack substance which of course is personality.
They live in childhood fantasies driving them as adults seeking knowledge, education on how to see more, and abuse more women, rather then better personal relationships.
It's adults in child mind states.
Any criminal would seek a way to find ways around getting caught, doing wrong. They are children running away from pain, in hopes of seeking the child dream they want to live. Being powerful and strong. Weak, child minds. Unable to be adults and be productive with any form of intelligence and emotional growth.
So, they desire visual effects, dispalyed interaction, by stablizing their own torn weakness within them. By making and watching porn as their only means of sexual satisfication. They have no concept of real people, and only want to dispaly and make little barbie dolls, for sexual pleasures.
When weak males can't obtain sex from interpersonal relationships, and honesty, it really shows you what they are made of, Corruption, lies, and lack of personal respect, even for themselves.
Doing good in the world carries, on for lifetimes beyond personal needs.
Anything that is made, developed and shared for all people, lasts in that positiveness, and is worthy. Anything for personal gain, is always-- low life individuals trying to make other believe they are more than what they are. One day, they willl look in the mirror the person looking back at them, will always be them....And they know they are weak, lack confidence, and need the support of others, just like criminals to support their own weakness.
The picture is never pretty, the reality never good.
The weak attracting the weak. The mind is wasted but more or less so are the lives that create it.
Why, because with such intelligence they could have create much more, instead of such a weak peek, using sex as their own growth.
When they learn, the weak and the need for money is a shallow life, they will learn their life lesson.
Society will play catch up.
Posted by: madhacker | Dec 31, 2010 9:51:46 AM
This coming from someone named dumbfks!!! LOL!! Sorry, but I love porn and have a perfectly normal life. Matter of fact, my wife, with whom I have a very fulfilling relationship both sexually and mentally, loves it too!!
Weak, Unconfident, Not me pal!! I have an amazing life!
Anyway Dumbfks, stay off the Springer!!
Posted by: Herry69 | Dec 31, 2010 10:42:28 AM
sex sells. simple as that.
Posted by: Dumbfks | Dec 31, 2010 2:09:36 PM
Well madhacker, you are lacking in creative pleasure for personal sexual pleasure, and have to involve joint ventures, on a screen, not in person.
You seek, visuals to stimulate your own sexual creativity, thus assuming that by watching prostitution. Yeppers, that is what it is, people making money of those who buy into it as sexual enticement. It's illegal, and yet, they have been able to support this industry, by having those purchase the fantasy. They sell the fantasy, and you pay for the dream.
For one thing, ask yourself, "Why you have to watch others having sex to have a complete sexual experience, with your wife?"
I'd suggest perhaps you lack mental creativity and passion, and seek sexual stimulation, only by believing the only way to enjoy sex is by seeing prostitutes, getting paid to fk up your own thinking.
Thus proving that your own mind lacks in the creative display of character developments, within yourself. It is also a proven fact that males who engage in such activity lack in the department of being good lovers. At first using it to show you ways to have sex, to help build up your ow confidence, you use it now as a way, to seek pleasure. You must enjoy the intimate male to male interactions, thus arousing your own sexual pleasures. Are you secretly, bi or gay?
Again, criminal minds influencing those of weaker minds to become part of the illegal activity. Why because you forget the bottom line is dollars, and messing with minds, rather then having it labelled what it is. Living off the avails of prostitution.
I'd have to wonder how many other influencers you using at the same time while watching.
Drugs, booze. Hey, it all goes hand in hand.. Excuse the pun..
Your a perfect subject, for repeat offending, supporting a financial gain.
Posted by: semismart | Dec 31, 2010 2:28:01 PM
Next to doing violence, sex has always been a strong modivatior for technology. Love it or hate it pornography is a very strong influence in all aspects of society. You will never eliminate it but you can reduce its harmfull effects with strong arguments. The idea that porngraphy users are socially disfunctional and the women in the films exploited is not one of them. A stronger arguement is that it w ill no more help you to be a better sex partner than watching the WWF wrestling will make you a better fighter.
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