[Infowarrior] - 12 Ways Porn Has Changed the Web (For Good and Evil)

[Richard Forno]

12 Ways Porn Has Changed the Web (For Good and Evil)

The sex industry is behind many innovations that today's Netizens  
can't live without, as well as some nasty bits we wish had never  
existed.

For an industry that many people won't admit they've ever patronized,  
pornography has had an amazing impact on virtually every new medium,  
from cave painting to photography. Dirty pictures have been credited  
with ensuring the future of the VCR, boosting cable TV subscriptions,  
helping to kill off the Betamax and HD DVD formats, and (perhaps most  
important) driving the growth of the Internet.

In fact, the adult entertainment industry has been on top of many of  
the Net's most crucial tech innovations--but not because it invented  
any of them.

According to Lewis Perdue, author of Eroticabiz: How Sex Shaped the  
Internet, "without business and technical pioneers in the online sex  
business, the World Wide Web would never have grown so big so  
quickly." (Not that we think size matters.)

The innovations happen because porn is "an ecosystem in which  
participants are willing--indeed forced--to experiment, and where  
experimentation isn't hobbled by common sense, good taste, or  
bureaucracy," says Bruce Arnold, principal of Caslon Analytics, a  
research and analysis firm from Braddon, Australia, that specializes  
in regulatory issues, demographics, social trends, and technologies.

In an industry notorious for erecting walls of secrecy, hard numbers  
are difficult to come by, and most evidence is anecdotal. Still, it's  
clear that the adult industry has helped shape the Internet as we know  
it today, even if it has also been at the forefront of a number of  
less savory innovations. Let's take a look at a not-entirely-dirty  
dozen.

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