Sex sells, but it also inspires: How the adult film industry shaped the tech landscape we know and love.
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Ok - here we go... a walk down memory lane and talk about the good old days of VHS and dial-up internet and porn.
The adult film industry played a significant role in shaping the technology we use today. From the format wars to online streaming, porn was at the forefront of innovation.
Today, as we enter the age of AI-based personal assistants, I'm left wondering: how will porn drive the evolution and standards? How'd porn impact tech in the past, and what it could mean for the future of AI.
First, we've been here before. No matter how evolved one might think the human race is, base desires still drive progress in all things. There's a coined phrase, "erotic technology impulse".
John Tierney, a fellow at Columbia University studied the cultural impact of technology, traced the “erotic technological impulse” back at least 27,000 years—among the first clay-fired figures uncovered from that time were women with enhanced body parts.
“Sometimes the erotic has been a force driving technological innovation,” Tierney wrote in The New York Times in 1994, “virtually always, from Stone Age sculpture to computer bulletin boards, it has been one of the first uses for a new medium.”