Skip to main content

Pornography & Technology: Buddies for Life?

Pornography is one of the most frowned upon human activities(hobbies), considered by many as a vice. Wikipedia describes it as Pornography or porn is the depiction of explicit sexual subject matter for the purpose of sexually exciting the viewer. Pornography is mostly associated with a male audience, with most men having viewed pornography in their lifetime. Many men will consider someone viewing pornography to be indulging in a vice, however, the same men will view, purchase and enjoy pornography out of public view. The question therefore, is where you view the pornography and the ethics behind the pornographic material been viewed. In fact, pornography is so popular that it has been associated with the evolution of technology, and the adaptation of some emerging technology over some other incumbent form. In some cases, inferior technology has trumped over some superior technology due to the pornographic foot print of inferior technology.

In this article, we shall heavily refer to an academic research document(by Peter Johnson) pertaining to this issues.

Pornography, apparently, is mostly responsible for the existence of the English and Italian languages, which evolved from some other medieval languages. The pornographic media to blame for this are the novels(or rather tales) Canterbury Tales by George Chaucer and Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio. The two were hugely popular collections of tales written in English and Italian dialects respectively. The tales were heavily laden with sex hence leading to their popularity. Before this, the London citizens equally spoke French and English while the Italians spoke more of Latin. The fact that the tales were read out to the mostly illiterate population resulted in their source dialects been adopted in England and Italy.

The printing press was the next major invention, and of course the Bible, legal, scientific and scholarly texts were the first to heavily utilise the printing press. However, the pornographic works of Pietro Aretino's Postures and Francois Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel became very popular once they were put into press. They are a collection of erotic engravings of sexual positions.You can Google them(Not Safe For Work).

Photography was the next popular invention, and pornography was in the limelight again. During the 1860's U.S. Civil war, soldiers demanded letters accompanied by pornographic photo's from their spouses back at home. The pornographic literature that was making its way to the front line was so immense that the U.S. congress decided to intervene by passing a law that banned pornography in the mail, which came into been after the war was already over.

Then along came Cable T.V. , where people paid to have shows and movies cabled to their homes, and what would these people want to pay to watch. You guessed it, most early Cable T.V. adopters apparently were paying to watch blue shows at home. This was then followed by the biggest revolution in home entertainment, the Video tape. There were two video tape formats which were battling out for adoption, the superior Betamax by Sony and the inferior VHS by JVC. Then porn came into the scene, and became widely available on VHS, and that was the end of the superior Betamax.The JVC board must have ploughed back their profits to pornography for their critical backing!Pornography has also been attributed to the growth of the premium 900(0800) numbers amongst other technologies.

When it comes to the individual level, our research has shown that many people (male) adopt technological advancements (the internet, video/camera phones, T.V., video/DVD players) in the pursuit of pornography. We found out that when most people activated inetrnet on their mobile devices, the first thing they sought were links to pornography sites and downloads. So do most people who start going to cybercafes to surf- they go there after hearing that there is a lot of pornography on the internet.If you doubt me on this, airlines have recently introduced in flight internet. Well, the passengers were quick to notice that, and the first place they visited was home: pornography sites. Take a look at this phenomenon at American Airlines.

In case you have a technology interest that fails to pick up, you now have a hint of how you can make it popular!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Beers in Kenya: A sober opinion

Note: This is a dated post and has since been mostly passed by events. SAB Miller beers including Castle and Peroni are no longer widely available in Kenya after their exist. Sirville Brewery was bought out by Brew Bistro before being permanently shut in a tax dispute. Kenya is a land of milk, honey, beaches and taxes. I have penned, or is typed, a newer post here .  Peroni - One of the best beers in Kenya. Did a taste of canned and bottled Italian, and bottled Tanzanian I like the tangy flavour and body in Tanzanian Peroni. The can is close. Heineken drinkers will like the Italian one.  I have had a short beer swigging stint in my life. It has however been long enough for me to share my opinion of Kenyan beer. Interestingly, over the course of sharing such opinions with other drunkards connoisseurs,  I have found that we all have different views as to what beer is the best, which one makes you too drunk, or which one gives one free, extra hangover for every ha...

Beers of Kenya. The Ultimate 2019 Guide

Four years ago, precisely in 2015, I wrote about beer in Kenya in what has gone on to be my most popular post this year with more than 5,000 people reading it. It seems that there is a lot of interest in exploring beer in Kenya, which is understandable. The brewing sector has grown since then and we now have lots of options, which means it is time for another review. Back in 2015, Kenya had one major brewer - EABL/KBL, challenged by Keroche and Sierra which is more of a small volume craft brewer, and arguably Kenya’s first craft brewery. It had also been joined by Brew Bistro which mostly sells its malted stuff at its outlets in Nairobi and later by Sirville, a bar located at Galleria Mall. Sirville was later sold to Brew Bistro and converted to the latter for a while, before shutting down in what is alleged to be a tax dispute.

Why Humanity Hasn't Learned From the Covid Pandemic

In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic began ravaging the world, succeeding the 1918 flu pandemic.  Many found it unbelievable that despite all the scientific progress that the world has made since 1918, from composite jets to modern healthcare to going to the moon, the world was still susceptible to a pandemic.  Ironically, some of these advancements largely played a role in the spread of the pandemic. Thousands of global flights every hour and air conditioning fanned its spread like a dry wind would in a forest fire.  There was even further disbelief in mid-2020 when it became apparent that many countries were even struggling to keep a pandemic in check. Developed countries, supposed to have the best healthcare, suffered the worst outbreaks amidst disagreements on measures such as quarantines and wearing of masks.  In yet another twist, technology advancement finally came to our rescue with the speedy development of vaccines, including the safe pioneering of never-tried-b...

Nairobi's Top 4 Texas Brisket Places Reviewed and Ranked

Brisket on a bed of roast vegetables with barbecue sauce at Texas Brisket, Kikuyu  This review has been updated after a number of you suggested I try the brisket at County2County.  What's the best place to have Brisket in Nairobi? What's even brisket?  Brisket is one of the toughest cuts in a cow, from around the belly. It is so tough that it has to be smoked for about 16 hours to tenderise. But that there, is the catch.  12 to 16 hours later, it is the most flavourful and softest cut you will ever have. So full of flavour and so soft you can pick it apart with your fingers.  However, due to the long cooking time involved, only a few places offer brisket in Nairobi.  The best so far is Texas Brisket which is located within Kikuyu Railway station.  They do the meat for a proper 16 hours, and will usually have a fatty or non-fatty portion. The fatty portions are more tasty. A 500 gram serving goes for KSh. 900 and a 1 KG order comes with a serving of fre...

Rather than positivity, Kenya needs to face its problems

Traffic between Thika and Nairobi as a result of Highway Bumps and reliance on the road  as the sole link between the two towns. Arguing the traffic is better than in Lagos or encouraging people to use the road earlier doesn't solve the problem A fierce debate springs up every now and then on development in Kenya, or in other developing countries. There are two schools of thought - those who argue that a lot needs to be done and what is there is barely much, and those who feel a lot of progress has been made. Those who focus on the progress will point out that at least Kenya (or another country) is better than its neighbouring or other countries in its status when it comes to some aspect such as roads, or education. While this is true, it however presents a lot of danger as we will discuss shortly.