In PC World: 12 Ways the Sex Trade Has Changed the Web

Image of French Internet fetish star Mina before; look after the jump for the “after” photo from the camera’s view.

Just published in PC World is Dan Tynan’s 12 Ways the Sex Trade Has Changed the Web. You can read the official PC World version in that first link — though I noticed it’s edited and they made it a little more sensationalized than the informative original version, which I recommend reading here. Adding “Thank you porn!” to the headline is really tacky guys, especially with an exclamation point. Unnecessary. The best way to piss me off as a sex writer is to add exclamation points to my writing, as if sex was so likeOMG!!!!! you have to beat people over the head with it. Anyway, I’m quoted in the piece and it’s a good resource for historical context — Tynan is really a pleasure to work with. It’s packed with interesting stuff. I especially like that he immediately points out the fact that people thinking that porn innovates or creates new tech is a misnomer — porn and sex commerce rarely innovates tech (and I have no idea why people think it does), though porn certainly capitalizes on certain technologies once it figures out what to do with it. Usually. Snip:

For an industry that many 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 importantly, 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 several less savory innovations. Let’s take a look. (…)

1. Nice: Online payment systems

The next time you buy something at Amazon or another online retailer, marveling at the ease and security of e-commerce, don’t just thank Jeff Bezos, thank Richard Gordon. In the mid-1990s Gordon founded Electronic Card Systems, which pioneered credit card transactions for a wide range of illicit sites, according to the New York Times.

“While riches were being minted and squandered in the dot-com ’90s, Gordon made a fortune by taking a commission for processing sales on a range of sites … like ClubLove, which published the Pamela Anderson-Tommy Lee sex tape,” wrote the Times‘ Brad Stone. (Gordon’s attorney denied that he was involved with pornography; Stone found a dozen former partners or employees who begged to differ.) (…read more, dantynan.com)