View Poll Results: Does Porn drive the development of new multimedia technology?

Voters
25. You may not vote on this poll
  • Yes, Porn is big business and the world revolves around it.

    4 16.00%
  • No, no, not at all.

    1 4.00%
  • Porn just happens to be eager users of new tech.

    20 80.00%
Results 1 to 25 of 25

Thread: Need your opinions!

  1. #1
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    Need your opinions!

    ok, I doing a presentation as apart of my class project. I'm doing well to get it done and thought it would be nice to get peoples general opinion on the subject matter.

    Ok the subject is: "The influence of Porn on the development of Multi-Media".

    I going for one of those who is driving who type discussions. The teacher has put me very last on the ticket to see how many people stick around at the prospect of seeing porn.

  2. #2
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    Ok i'll bite.

    New tech has a lot of driving forces behind it.

    Modem speed could be put down to porn or mp3 downloads.

    CPU speed is mostly the desire of the manufactures to sell a new pc to an ever bloated market. Most people would not noticed the difference.

    Graphics cards are driven by the games industry. Every now and again a game comes out that pushes the limits and you got to buy a new one.

  3. #3
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    I don't really get the last option.


  4. #4
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    As far as I know, porn was the main drive of the success of VHS.

    Now it is pioneering multimedial technologies in the DVD market (e.g. a scene can be watched from more than one angle).

  5. #5
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    Is it just me, or does this topic seem a little inappropriate for even the BABBling forum???

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by R.A.F.
    Is it just me, or does this topic seem a little inappropriate for even the BABBling forum???
    Having been in a thread discussing drugs ops:, yeah, I'd have to agree with you on this one.

  7. #7
    I don't see how this thread is inappropriate for a Babbling forum as far as we discuss the technical implication of a buisness, and not the admittedly inappropriate content the buisness deals in.

    I don't think porn per se drives anything in multimedia. In fact technically it is just a subcategory of the multimedia, and more precisely of the image and movie part.

    Thus everything driven by multimedia, be it connection speeds, video compression technology, Digital Video, DVD burners, etc... that is mainly pushed by the games and entertainment buisness, and secondarily by a hacker community (like DivX) or home users (like DV) benefits porn as a side-effect, without it being a major player AFAIK.

    However, multimedia technologies have a lot of appeal to consumers of porn ;
    First because it de-materialises all the transactions, and enables someone to get whatever they want anonymously, and untraceably. (for the lambda neighbour or family member that is) They only need one credit card others don't know about and everything is fine, it is easyer to hide a file in a computer than a heap of magazines under a bed :-).

    Second because it removes a lot of steps in the diffusion, A paypal account and a DVD burner or a high speed connection are far less expensive and troublesome than were the traditional international money orders and the means of professionally duplicating VHS, and thus lowers the investments and costs implied in producing the media, while maximising the number of potential clients, thus making diffusion quite cost-effective. (The same trend also benefits the shareware and specialised software industry.)

  8. #8
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    What's porn? 8-[

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by SeanF
    What's porn? 8-[
    Oh no. You didn't just go there.

    Porn is any sexual or violent content in media that a person disapproves of.

    If enough of them disapprove of it, it becomes a decency standard for the community.

    For example, most people seeing The Passion of Christ are having religious experiences. A very few consider the content pornographic. Since it's only a few, it doesn't qualify as porn.

    However, the same people having a religious experience in The Passion of Christ and racing to take their children to see it, were absolutely mortified at seeing Janet Jackson's breast. That was horribly indecent and pornographic in their view. Since it's the majority, I guess what she did qualifies as pornographic.

    I am in the minority on both counts. 8)

  10. #10
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    people lets get past the word porn. I'm not trying to glorify it,i'm just analysing the question put forward.

    I'm also covering in my presentation the some of the consequences of making porn so easily available, such as being released soon in the 3G mobile phone network where people can have all sorts of video sent to their 3g phones including porn. How are children to be protected from this?
    What controls need to be in place before the technology hits the market place?

    Hopefully you can see where i'm going with this. I don't won't the thread hijacked by people purely expressing morals.... [-X

  11. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by SciFi Chick
    Quote Originally Posted by SeanF
    What's porn? 8-[
    Oh no. You didn't just go there.

    Porn is any sexual or violent content in media that a person disapproves of.
    This definition is new to me.

    I thought that we were talking about the "adult entertainment" industry.
    Since this industry is doing well, there are not too many people that disapprove.

  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by papageno
    Quote Originally Posted by SciFi Chick
    Quote Originally Posted by SeanF
    What's porn? 8-[
    Oh no. You didn't just go there.

    Porn is any sexual or violent content in media that a person disapproves of.
    This definition is new to me.

    I thought that we were talking about the "adult entertainment" industry.
    Since this industry is doing well, there are not too many people that disapprove.
    Ah, see, that's the problem that arises when a word with more than one definition is chosen. You were thinking of adult entertainment.

    I was thinking of the definition that involves illegal material.

  13. #13
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    Couldn't we say that pornographic material is unsuitable for general public exposure, not just general public exposure which would also cover benign certificate 18 films?

  14. #14
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    I don't want to get into a discussion of what constitutes pornography either.

    But I will say that my advisor once told me that we consider problems like algorithm complexity, distributed consensus, proving algorithms correct, fault-tolerance, and formal modeling all so that people can more efficiently share adult pictures on the net. 8)

  15. #15
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    I think you could make the case that pornography has made the internet as successful as it is. I mean, that's most likely where most of the money is going. I'd like to think not, but I can't think of anything else that would be more.

    *Crosses fingers for the Flat-Earthers*

  16. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by papageno
    Quote Originally Posted by SciFi Chick
    Quote Originally Posted by SeanF
    What's porn? 8-[
    Oh no. You didn't just go there.

    Porn is any sexual or violent content in media that a person disapproves of.
    This definition is new to me.

    I thought that we were talking about the "adult entertainment" industry.
    Since this industry is doing well, there are not too many people that disapprove.
    Here's the real deal re the numbers.

    Publicly a lot of people will disapprove of the industry and its products.

    Privately those same people will purchase the industry's products.

    Sound like hypocrisy? You bet!

    Caution: links contain 1. potentially brain-damaging content 2. adult content (language).

    Amazing that this guy's still in business. But, never underestimate the resiliency of the faithful.

    "We do not deal much in fact when we are contemplating ourselves."
    - Mark Twain

    #-o

  17. #17
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    Its so ironic that just as I clicked 'post reply' a window pops up and asks me if I want sex.

    I was going to ask if these sites cannot be banned from the internet or something. When I heard about the whitehouse.com porn site I wondered to myself how desperate are these people to get other to join into their sick society? Luring children who do not know that it is whitehouse.gov I mean........ [-( Aren't these sites illegal?

    ..........Sorry but I don't know much about the internet........ ops:

    Edited to remove the 'www.' from the whitehouse.com

  18. #18
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    SciFi Chick's definition of pornography is pretty much the real and technical definition going at the moment. Pornography is considered material, usually thought not necessarily of a sexual nature, which one feels to be degrading or abusive to a particular group of people. The "Adult Entertainment" industry panders what most would call erotica. Geeks usually call it "pr0n".

    Erotica definately does not make the world, or even the internet, go round. It definately, however, makes it a more happening place to be. The internet would be alive and well without the overwhelming amount of adult oriented sites. Traffic would just be way down. MPEG, JPEG, QT, and all the other technologies would still be around (there's always free movies and music on someone's mind to drive the need for higher quality and more compact compression), there'd just be fewer of them. P2P networks might find themselves empty, though.


    Oh, and I don't see why people would want to keep away from discussing what exactly is meant by "porn". How can you hold a discussion on something if you don't know what it is, exactly, you're talking about?

  19. #19
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    I hate to say it, but porn is definitely big business. Look how much of it there is on the internet! It's everywhere!

  20. #20
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    Given your topic, it would seem previous posters are correct: that pornography has had little to do with development of multimedia, but has hitched a ride, so to speak; I note that the question was not about moneymaking, but appeared to concern technical developments.

    FYI, 'pornography' is from the Greek (well, yeah), meaning 'writing about prostitutes'.

  21. #21
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    I didn't realise that there was a definition difference between porn and pornography. I am certainally talking about the legal stuff that is all around us everyday and creeping into new mediums that become available.

    To the original question and the poll people certainally think the "Adult entertainment industry" is not directly driving the development of new multimedia technology. But many of multimedias creators have succeded because of the Adult entertainment industry willingness to use bleeding edge technology in opening new markets.

    I will go on to say that the Adult entertainment industry has been at saturation point for a very long time and this factor drives the industry into useing technology that for the rest of the business world regards as risky or unproven.

    Hate it or like it Adult entertainment industry is here to stay and our political leaders need to stay ontop of new technological mediums and how Adult entertainment gets distributed on it.

    Thankyou to those who understood the question asked of them and the opinions expressed. We got through this without any badness. What I hoped for in a adult conversation.

  22. #22
    I just saw a program on pornography the other day. Check out Sexual Personae for the academic side of porn. Here's the info as I remember it.

    About a third of all VHS rentals are porn rentals. If this is true then porn is definately a driving influence in the video arena.

    About a third of all internet hook ups lead to porn viewing. Once again, if this is true then porn is driving the internet. Economically at least.

    A high percentage of porn has been filmed in the San Fernando Valley but digital video is changing the dynamics of porn. On a funny note, remember how Boogie Nights talked about porn going from film to tape and how this upset everything back then too? Meh...

    I got into downloading because I love Samurai Jack and there was a site called the Digital Archive Project that coordinated episode downloads though edonkey. All of the skills I developed downloading SJ were easily transferred over to porn. Parallel evolution eh... Porn gets old though... I don't know how people can keep going back to it. Roman Polanski, a sex offender himself, made a great movie called Bitter Moon that covers sexual slippery sloping.

    As far as kids and porn goes... Here's a thought... A lot of kids find their dad's stockpile of porn. This has been going on for generations. It's almost like a right of passage. I've heard the funniest porn discovery stories. That said, there should be some sort of trunk that porn goes into so that it isn't absolutely everywhere.

    Pornography gets disgusting. Some people are disgusted by nipples but everyone draws a line somewhere. There's definately too much out there. Fortunately, I haven't run into any porn on accident lately...

  23. #23
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    We're lucky with the ads. They're advertising telescopes.

  24. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by SciFi Chick
    Quote Originally Posted by R.A.F.
    Is it just me, or does this topic seem a little inappropriate for even the BABBling forum???
    Having been in a thread discussing drugs ops:, yeah, I'd have to agree with you on this one.
    Was that the thread I started a few months back?

    O.k lets not beat around the bush here. Porn so long as it's kept away from kids & the people participating are happy to do so,can be a force for good. There I said it.

    Consider this which would you prefer?
    1) Sad lonely man at home with a magazine

    2) Sad lonely frustrated man out on the streets.

    It can also be a bad force. It can give people an unrealistic impression of what the "perfect" body should be. Not only in what they look for in a partner but also in how they see themselves.

    I think the reason that porn took off so readily on the net was the fact that it took away the "top shelf shame" of picking up the mag & going to the counter to pay. How ever it also took away the protection of kids.

    So in summing up I would say that Retail point porn can be a force for good in the same way that methadone can control the urges of heroin addicts. But net porn is not only a waste of bandwidth but can harm young kids.

    But it is up to the parents to superise their children when they are on the net. I know this sounds harse but you wouldn't let a young child just run around a city alone in the middle of the night would you? There are worst things on the net that a child can run into than porn.

    Phew! one of the longest postings i've made, and it's about porn....
    What does that say about me? 8-[

  25. #25
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    Quote Originally Posted by Amadeus
    Phew! one of the longest postings i've made, and it's about porn....
    What does that say about me? 8-[
    Plenty.

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