17 June 2016 12:49
For more than ten years, thousands of nerds and gadget lovers who went to Las Vegas for the electronics fair consumer (CES), they are not only found in front of the latest generation of technological devices. Until 2012, in fact, the electronics show coincided with that of pornography, which often occupied a space in the same building. Visitors to the ETUC, which for most were male, so they could watch the latest flat screen televisions and immediately turn the corner to chat with porn stars.
It is no coincidence that these two events have been organized in the same place for so many years. The pornography salon was born from the “adult videos” of the ETUC in the nineties, when its participants got tired of being relegated to a dark basement of the conference center. In 2011, a representative of the porn estimated salon that they shared the two fairs around 40 percent of the visitors. They were then separated the following year it was very expensive to organize two major events simultaneously: for that now take place in different places a few days away.
Visitors to the Ces going to peek into the teeming space pornography have good reason to do so, beyond the half-naked ladies. If you want to know what will be the next big technological innovation, it’s convenient to jump even the expo for adults: for several decades in fact, the porn industry has a crucial role in driving the adoption of new technologies.
Without the porn, chances are good that the VCR would never have taken off
the influence of porn on the technology appeared with the VCR, said Patchen Barss, author of the erotic engine , which It tells the story of the effects of pornography on mass communication. Before the VCR came along in home living rooms, watching an adult movie meant having to put secretly in cinemas of dubious reputation.
The ability to watch in the privacy of your own home helped create an initial market for home-video equipment, explains Barss. No porn, “chances are good that the VCR would never have taken off.”
Some of the factors that favored the affirmation of the VCR also contributed to the spread of cable television, continues Barss. Cable TV allowed to broadcast more daring content, and this was one of the reasons that pushed people to pay for the additional channels, although the others were free.
With VCRs and cable TV, the adult entertainment industry created a first wave of new users. “Pornography much influence when the technologies are still new, imperfect, expensive and difficult to use,” says Barss. “They create an initial market that enables it to develop to the point where they are ready for the general public”.
Looking for privacy
The main consumers adult content – ie young males – are usually more willing to take on the costs and risks of using a new technology, says Jonathan Coopersmith, a technology history at Texas a & M university. If they bet on the wrong technology, equipment buy just can quickly become expensive plastic and metal clusters.
The industry of pornography does not create new ways to communicate, said Coopersmith, nor is it particularly able to predict which technologies are designed to take off. It simply uptake of innovations before the others, and its strength is sufficient to ensure that people are willing to follow it.
This technological lead is in part the result of necessity. “Standing on the edge allows a certain flexibility,” says Barss. When at last the new technologies reach the general public, they can become less open to adult content, and the social stigma associated with porn gradually attracts consumers to even more new technologies and generally little-tested, that guarantee more privacy.
Whatever the next frontier of the porn industry, is likely to beat back all the time
the latest news regarding private access to pornography came with internet. On the web even the guy behind the counter of the library is required to know what you doing. But even if it represented a further step towards isolation, according Barss Internet also it introduced in porn a sense of community. The first virtual message boards, and the first online forum allowed people to share erotic content produced by users, while maintaining the distance and anonymity. For once, then, was not a company pornographic to draw public attention to a platform promising pushed fun: was the public to create it and share it firsthand.
Of course, the people were already able to be produced porn in the house for decades. The boom in homemade pornography occurred in the seventies and eighties with the spread of the camera, a device that according to Coopersmith “has transformed the world of pornography, erasing the separation between producers, distributors and consumers.” And since the Internet has simplified the transfer of data – via private servers, torrent or stream – the general public is able to generate, share and earn with explicit content.
It is this social aspect that has surprised more Barss during his research. Whatever the next frontier of the porno industry – virtual reality, tactile feedback or teledildonics, or some other new invention – is likely to beat back all the time, and that can give birth to a new community around them. “If the porn manages to push the technology is because people, in addition to seeking more privacy in the consumer, also seeking new ways to get in touch with other people.”
(Translated by Matteo Colombo)
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