CHICAGO – Of the many myths and half-truths which surround the adult entertainment industry, one of the most persistent is the notion the adult industry is a major driver of technological development.
Porn, you’ll hear people say quite authoritatively, is the reason VHS won out over Beta, a primary factor in the rise of the internet and the original inspiration behind the development of live video streaming.
While there’s some truth to these claims, a more accurate way of seeing things is the popularity of porn has encouraged the adoption of the above-referenced technologies among consumers, but there is almost no support for the idea the porn industry directly developed any of these technologies, formats or platforms.
I’m not going to take the time to debunk each of these notions individually, in part because so many people far more knowledgeable than I have already done so. It doesn’t take more than a Google search or two, especially with respect to the VHS vs. Beta question, to find far more plausible explanations for the victory of VHS rooted in issues like its vastly lower cost than Beta and the different approaches to the market taken by the companies behind the formats.
Despite the evidence porn has had relatively little to do with creating and refining consumer technologies, the idea porn is a tech-driver is a very popular one, and one I think with which we’re all well familiar by now — which is why I find it so curious that author Ross Benes termed the notion “a secret.”
“Everyone knows about porn’s prevalence, but few realize its true power,” Benes wrote in a recent piece for Business Insider. “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.”
Uh, Ross, were you surprised because this is the first time you’ve ever researched or thought about this stuff?
It’s not as though this subject has never been written about before. In fact, if you assemble a Google search from the terms “porn technology vhs,” you’ll find no shortage of articles ruminating on the question of porn’s influence in the outcome of the VHS vs. Beta format war. The same can be said of the search phrase “porn technology blu-ray hd dvd” and similar searches related to all the other technologies referenced in Benes’ article.
In another observation that isn’t particularly novel, Benes acknowledges the internet has been a “double-edged sword” for the porn industry, creating a massive distribution channel, but also establishing the most efficient means of distributing pirated content ever conceived.
This challenge hasn’t stopped the porn industry from blazing new trails in technology though, according to Benes.
“Despite many porn companies going bust over the past decade, the industry hasn’t stopped innovating,” Benes wrote. “Computer-controlled sex toys, virtual reality, and sex avatars are just a few of the products that porn execs are tinkering with.”
This is true enough, I suppose, but there’s still a problem with Benes’ analysis: Each of these examples is something people who aren’t porn execs have been “tinkering with” for years.
You’ve heard of “teledildonics,” a term applied to sexual gratification devices that can be remote-controlled over the internet? Take a guess at how old this term is, and I’ll bet you won’t come up with 42 years old, despite that being the correct answer.
No, Ted Nelson didn’t personally develop the same technology he conceived of in his book Computer Lib/Dream Machines, but when the technology finally was developed, it sure as hell wasn’t developed by a porn executive.
At its core, “telecontrol” technology of the sort teledildonics relies on has been in existence since the 1980s, when DARPA engineers first began experimenting with remote control of devices and systems across the organization’s massive computer network, ARPANET, the predecessor of the commercial internet.
I recall people performing demos of teledildonic systems at adult trade shows in the late 1990s, but the idea was still in its infancy as a practical application, and nobody (that I can recall, at least) had a system up and running to which consumers could fork over their credit card numbers.
On the non-porn side of things, meanwhile, Air Force pilots working at the behest of the CIA were remote-piloting drones over Afghanistan during the Clinton administration.
I don’t want to put words in Benes’ mouth (or on his keyboard), so it’s important to acknowledge he doesn’t seem to be claiming the porn industry developed any of these technologies, just helped to popularize them. To the extent this is his point, it’s a valid one.
To suggest the porn industry’s role in popularizing various technologies is a secret, though? All I can say is if porn’s contribution to the world of technology is a secret, it’s not a very closely-held one.
