Porn Quietly Leads Way In Tech

Many people don't realize that the 'adult entertainment' industry is often the innovator of or first to adopt new technologies, particularly in home entertainment. Although this article leads with sites converting to be iPad friendly (not that big of a deal, they simply converted videos to HTML5 and made sure their sites render ok on the device) in particular the adoption of VCRs around 1980, the development of streaming video on the web, and the integration of secure internet credit card transactions were all led by this industry. One hopes the adoption of 3-D TV will not.

Whenever there's a new content platform, the adult-entertainment industry is one of the first to adopt it -- if they didn't help create it in the first place.

"It's not necessarily that the porn industry comes up with the ideas, but there's a huge difference in any technology between the idea and the successful application," said Jonathan Coopersmith, a professor at Texas A&M University who teaches the history of technology.

"They're kind of the shock troops, and one of the nice things for them is that they can claim, 'Hey, I'm advancing technology.' "

From the printing press to instant cameras, from pay-per-view to VCRs, pornographers -- both professional and private -- have been among the quickest to jump on board with newly developed gadgets.

The first public screening of a movie was in 1895. Less than two years later, Coopersmith notes, the first "adult" film was released.

"The classic example is the VCR," said Oliver Marc Hartwich, an economist and senior fellow with Centre for Independent Studies, a conservative Australian think tank. "When it was introduced, Hollywood was nervous because the big studios feared piracy. They were even considering suing the VCR producers. "Not so the adult industry. They saw it as a big new market and seized the opportunity."

On the internet, streaming video, credit-card verification sites, Web referral rings and video technology like Flash all can be traced back to innovations designed to share, and sell, adult content.

[via CNN]