How the Adult Industry Drove Digital Tech—A Quick History (AVN)

Read the full article by Dmitrii Borodin at AVN.com

Even today, in 2019, pornography is often a delicate subject for public discussions while in many places on earth it’s downright taboo. Cultural perception aside, the truth is that porn is one of the major powerhouses of technological progress. Many technological features and innovations that have become commonplace were in fact brought to us by the adult entertainment industry, and there is nothing surprising about that. Pornography occupies a big share of online activity, with traffic to the largest adult websites amounting to hundreds of millions of visits.

First of all, you should be grateful to adult websites for the fast and smooth internet connection we have today. Since the advent of the World Wide Web era, consumers of adult content have felt the need for a speedy internet connection. These needs led to the development of ADSL technology. 

The adult industry didn’t “invent” this technology, but their user base can be easily seen as early adopters who to a certain degree are the reason we now have Amazon and YouTube (and Pornhub). For instance, back in the 1990s, Penthouse pushed things along online by offering fast (for the time) modems to all of its subscribers.