What would you think if you knew that the advanced state of modern technology was all thanks to pornography? How would you react if you were told the standard of streaming video you get on the Net was down to an industry of distinctly ill-repute, that a high-quality news feed was thanks to a lurid demand for nudity? Whatever it is that may have helped technology, it's deserving of appreciation. "Thanks porn for helping me get a faster Net connection. Thanks for improving the quality of my online news feed," you might say, beforeshaking your head at the absurdity of such a thought.
The same thing seems to be happening with hand-held technology. The PalmPilot and the mobile phone are finding the demand for pornography to be a valuable aid to advancement, at least according to some people working in the tech industry. Perhaps not as directly as it may sound. It seems that the viewing demand for pictures of naked bodies has played a significant role in the progression of Internet technology. The high-resolution graphics and streaming videos demanded a robust means of data transfer and the demand for porn may have shaped the supply of technology more than any other factor.
If you look back to the early days of porn on the Web, the influence is compelling obvious. Far from the raunchy JPEGs of today with their explicit detail and (usually digitally enhanced) shots of people in various states of undress, the early days of porn were nothing but a complex arrangement of letters.
Dubbed ASCII pr0n, in traditional hacker parlance, the pictures were a collection of alpha-numeric characters forming a magical image of disrobed human beings. ASCII (pronounced askee) is the basic computer key standard for text while the pr0n meaning is self-explanatory.
What makes this so relevant today is that there has been an interesting resurgence of this form of pornographic content.
Now that we are undergoing another development in data transfer rates, we're going through the same cycle again/the cycle is happening. As wireless technology catches up with its wired counterpart (whenever the overbearing hype becomes a reality in this part of the world), porn has had to find other means of expression.
Because bandwidth is so limited in a predominantly text-based electronic world, it has been a case of back-to-basics.
Now that hand-held devices have firmly penetrated are in the mass market, porn has had to find its way on to the machines and at the moment it resembles the Internet smut of yore. And the demand, it seems, is for pornography on the move. Hand-held adult content is the latest trend in the US and the enterprising porn kings are only too happy to dish it out. The anthropological implications of this is are another story.
Porn on a mobile phone and/or on a PDA (personal digital assistant) combines the digital benefits of the PC with the portability of the magazine. But now, the stealth of the phone or the Palm avoids embarrassment and mobility is compatible with the faster pace of a high-flying society.
You could be stuck in a board meeting or be thousands of feet in the air and still steal a look at some raunchy graphics.
Self-confessed hand-held porn king, Tony O'Neill is the CEO of an American-based website specialising in this form of porn.
PalmStories.com provides a daily fix of erotic stories and pictures to over than 25,000 users through its fee-based (and limited freebie) services and its business is mushrooming in tandem with demand.
"What really makes this so interesting for people is down to three major factors," says O'Neill. "One is that it's pretty customisable. You can pick whatever you want to see. The second thing is that it's totally portable. You take it with you wherever you want. And I think the most important thing is that it's completely private. I mean no one knows what you're reading.
"I mean if you're in a meeting you could look at this thing and no one would know what you're doing. I don't know how many people do that per se but it definitely has a value for consumers." O'Neill says.
Though there's some irony in the fact it has taken a reviled activity to promote the cause of knowledge, it's not a new phenomenon. While people may credit the military and educational institutions with much of the Internet's initial growth, a strong contingent of veteran users will tell you pornography deserves most of the accolades. OK,/kay, so it wouldn't have engineered the actual technology by any means, but as soon as it was in place the porn industry it employed it for these its own more subversive purposes.
Consumer demand is what determines the survival of a product in a capitalist society and it was the legions of computer hacks craving their porn that drove most of that trend.
Well, the all-important revenue-generating part anyway.
Though it doesn't reflect very well on the morality of many users, the Internet is not alone in having porn help out along the way. (You can be fairly sure it's not heralded in the history books as an adjunct to mainstream entertainment but many in the industry will count the video and magazine industries as fellow beneficiaries of the sleaze business.)
"As far as the Web is concerned, pornography has always been at the cutting edge technology-wise," O'Neill says. But he believes there is still some catching up to do before people will start trading desktop porn for the PDA's en masse.
According to think-tank Forester Research, the porn industry in the US generates billions of dollars each year - more, in fact, than the music or mainstream movie industries. Though it's likely the military and academics wouldn't approve, no one can deny it's a lucrative activity. So why wouldn't the porn companies seek a piece of the mobile porn pie? There are people in this world who have no qualms about encouraging illicit activity as long as there's money to be made. When O'Neill, who is a college student in Michigan and only 20 years of age-old, established the PalmStories site, it wasn't a case of him fulfilling a perverse hobby. In the early days of the devices, he looked at the potential for hand-helds to make money and realised that this ambition could best be realised with porn.
"I still don't know how people outside the porn industry are going to make money on hand-held content. I mean, we've seen the advertising market erode. You can't do e-commerce yet for the most part. I don't see where the money is going to come in aside from porn," he asserts.
The appeal for ASCII pr0n is widespread, but the followers of this novelty may not all be sex-starved perverts fixated on nudity. In addition to the desire for this form of porn, thankfully, there could be a more encouraging, innocent reason for the phenomenon to hit the hand-held devices.
Rather than a desire for hardcore nudity, it could be a nostalgic urge to witness the way things once were. If you've ever experienced the concept of ASCII Pr0n first-hand you'd see it's nothing to salivate over. You'd hardly call it explicit, seeing as the most detailed figure you glimpse is the voluptuous curve of the letter "O" or the raunchy shape of the letter "P". It takes a few seconds for the brain to register the pattern of text as a nude whole at all and when it does, it's far from spectacular.
Much like a techie would drool over an old Atari ST or a DJ would hunt for vintage vinyl, the real drive behind the phenomenon might be a simple fascination with the retro. For some, the motivation might be innocuous. The novelty factor still plays a large role. But what happens when the speed increases? What happens when broadband becomes a reality for wireless devices and we're suddenly capable of recreating the high-res images seen on a desktop PC? The Internet evolved from harmless text porn to hardcore videos in a short space of time so won't hand-held pornographers tread the same path? The nature of demand, once again, is likely to determine this.
With consumerism - and porn is the epitome of this - you can never get enough. It goes on until what was once a harmless and amusing low-res image to beam between friends or swap over SMS is suddenly hardcore live action.
"In about a year and a half, maybe two years, tops, you'll see streaming audio, streaming video situations where actors interact with the people on the screen. I think you'll see all the technology you see on the Net today on the hand-held," O'Neill predicts.
The only consolation to this possible proliferation of porn is the welcome side effect that the technology will get better for everything else. Personal mobile video- conferencing and academic streams could be among the more benign benefits coming to the fore. Though it mightn't get the approval of the Church, porn will have opened up the infrastructure for everything else.
No one can say in earnest that the demand for news on the go is enough to revolutionise wireless broadband. It might be acceptable then for pornography- on the go to pave the way for bigger and, better (and less raunchy) things.