What drives techonology?
In the 70s,there was a format war between VHS and Betamax. Betamax was general the better format, but porn embraced VHS and today VHS is the standard format. Likewise, in the 00s there was a format war between bluray and HD-DVD. History repeated itself and porn embrased HD-DVD while blu-ray shuned porn. Many techolology experts predicted that porn would be the deciding factor in determining who won the format war.
Oops …. Blu-ray won the format war. How did that happen?
This seems counterintutive in you belive that porn is a driving force behind new techonology. After all, the main reason the internet became so popular is because it let people view porn in their home. Napster only became as popular as it did because people figured out how to use it to swap porn. Cabel TV permited channles spicificly dedicated to porn. Pay-per-call telephone lines grew mostly because of phonesex services. The polirad camera let people make their own porn without the embarasement of needing to drop the film off for developement. camcorders and later camera phones did the same. ….. So how come porn didnt tip the scales for the High-def format wars?
To understand, you need to realise that sex only drives techonology when sex is public. Sexual revolutions happen in very perdictabal 70-80 year loops that are centered around ‘crisis moments’. Before the crisis moment is a generation of sexual revolution folowed by a generation of sex being very public. After the crisis moment comes a generation of sex burnout folowed by a generation of sex being very private. The crisis moments come ever 70-80 years. 9-11 and the war on terror / stock market crash and great depresion / civial war / revolutionary war / glorious revolution / armada crisis / war of the roses.
Take a look at what was happening to techonology durring the last period of public sexuality. The sexual revolution of the ‘gay ninties’ in 1890 led to the flapper ear of the early 20th century. Film techonology durring this time was fuled on by the popularity of Mutoscope. Hand cranked, coin operated, film views that only one person could watch at a time. This was the origin of the peep-show and several of these films showed full frontal nudity. But then the ‘crisis moment’ of the great depresion put an end to that and film went in the direction of story-telling based ‘movies’ shown to a mass audence. Paperback books were another example. They had been around for ages but it wasent untill the sexual revolution of the 1890s created the ‘dime novel’ that folks would buy mainly due to it being an easy source of erotica. But durring the great depresion, paperbacks stoped being the major driving force behind paperback publishing. And by the time the material shortages of WWII caught hold, paperback books were being fuled more by the nessasity of material shortages than by porn.
Or take another sexual revolution. The Libertine movement of the mid 1700s. Did you know that the driving force behind the discovery and advancement of electricity was because it was being used as a sex toy? They never taught that in high school physics. The first electrostatic generator was argubaly the hawksby machine. George Matthias Bose hooked up his maid to a one and had guests at the orgies he held try and molest her. Anyone who tried got shocked and everyone else had a good laugh. Jean-Antoine Nollet was a french scientiest who did research with Leyden jars. Quickly it becaume the vogue for young atractive ladies of the upper class to go to him for ‘private demonstreations’. A contemperary of his notied how there were always cariges of themse women parked out in front of his home. And dont even get started with Bengerman Franklin. The ‘inventor of electricity’ was one of the biggest perverts in all of history.
The height of sex being the driving force behind electrical research was the ‘Celestial Bed’ by James Graham. In 1779 he opened a spa where couples could come and fuck on top of an electrical charged bed. Why with all the sex that was driving electrical techonology up to that point how could he posiably fail? Well, he could fail because sex drives techonology only durring the times where sex is public. The ‘crisis moment’ of the american revolution had hit 3 years eariler and society was entering into a generation of sexual burnout (that would lead to a generation of sexual privacy durring the Era Of Good Feelings). The celestial bed fail spactaularaly and just five years after it had opened, the spa closed and James Graham went on to sell mud baths.
The generation of sexual revolution folowed by the generation of sexual publicity came to and end on our own ‘crisis moment’ of 9-11. We are now in an era of sexual burnout. A celeberity sex tape comes out today and its morely likely to be greated by the public with tedium rather than titilation. And now that we are past the generation where Madona wore her underware on the outside, and are in the generation where privacy is beginging to meen something again, sex is no longer driving techonology. Youtube changed the sharing of video on the net, but pornotube and redtube didnt come along untill much latter and are lagging far behind. Facebook and myspace were the forrunners of the new ‘web 2.0′ aplications. Sex didnt fule that techonology at all.
No trend continues forever. Just ask the people who invested in benny babies. Sex may have driven techonology for the past 30 years but its not driving techonology today.