How porn has been secretly behind the rise of the internet and other technologies
Author of ‘The Sex Effect’ finds that many technological developments have been influenced by pornography
By Ross Benes
Everyone knows about porn’s prevalence, but few realise its true power.
While putting together my new book “The Sex Effect” — which examines hidden relationships between sex and culture — I was surprised by how many technologies have been adopted by the masses because of pornography. VCRs, ecommerce, streaming services, affiliate marketing, and the internet itself all owe a debt of gratitude to the smut peddlers who helped popularise them. Because while the military created the internet, it would not have found a solid consumer base without porn. Think of the military as the inventor and creator of a product and porn as the entrepreneur who brings the product to the masses.
“In myriad ways, large and small, the porn industry has blazed a commercial path that other industries are hastening to follow,” Frederick Lane, author of “Obscene Profits: The Entrepreneurs of Pornography in the Cyber Age,” said.
Although new technologies have usually allowed the porn industry to expand, the internet (even though porn helped popularise it) has been a double-edged sword for the porn industry. It increased porn’s prevalence and popularity, but also facilitated easily accessible free porn and user-created sexual content.
But despite many porn companies going bust over the past decade, the industry hasn’t stopped innovating. Computer-controlled sex toys, virtual reality, and sex avatars are just a few of the products that porn execs are tinkering with.