October 20, 2010 | Online

Thank porn for the Internet

You can thank porn for all the wonderful things the Internet has to offer. In fact, many advances in various media stem from the wonderful world of smut. At least that's the premise behind Patchen Barss' latest work, 'The Erotic Engine.'

“Those who work in the pornography industry have also been business innovators, developing customer service models, secure transaction systems, distribution networks and marketing tools that mainstream companies later emulated,” he explains.

Porn advances are ruled by two very important factors: the desire for pleasure and the need for privacy. If porn companies could provide both, they were more likely to make money. Being on the edge of technological advances, then, just makes good business sense.

Take photography, for example. In 1848, there were only thirteen photography studios in Paris. Two decades later over 350 studios existed. And most of them were peddling images of naked women, being sold as “art studies” for aspiring artists. Better photographic techniques led to better, more saleable images.

"Porn sites, through business necessity, have become the model for how to keep customers comfortable with and secure in their online transactions," Barss writes about today's industry. "Adult sites could not wait for mainstream companies to solve the problem … so they became pioneers of self-protection strategies."

This has lead to improvements in bandwidth, delivery speeds, and credit card processing.

“However you might recoil from their primitive attitudes toward sex, violence and women, they still are responsible for pushing the technology of video games in new directions, experimenting with alternative marketing plans and generally helping the medium to develop.”

So next time someone tells you that porn has done nothing good for society, please correct them.