4 ms·

How?

• jstarfish 8y ago
  The adage used to be that porn drove innovation. We need personal computers to watch...porn. We need faster internet to acquire...porn. We need higher-capacity hard drives and better compression algorithms to store...porn. We need robots with more humanoid and lifelike prosthetics...so we can fuck them. Perhaps this was true in the 90s-00s, but I doubt it. The state of VR is greatly ahead of where it was 20 years ago but still just a novelty in the context of porn. The current advances in ML, AI and whatever blockchain ends up being used for have little to nothing to do with porn itself (recommendation algorithms and chatbot/NLP tech have application but aren't drivers). Robotics is being advanced by far more productive applications like manufacturing and putting unskilled humans out of work. We may eventually get to the point of autonomous sexbots that leverage all of these technologies, but it's surveillance tech and the monetization of voyeurism (for advertising) that's driving today's advances, not porn itself.
  • henriquemaia 8y ago
    I agree with your conclusion (the current state of affairs), but one could argue that VR has developed less optimally than if you had the porn industry enthused with the prospects of being the first players getting to that market. But this is pure speculation.
• henriquemaia 8y ago
  Though that comment may be somewhat playful, the affirmation makes good biological sense if you consider that porn messes almost directly with one of our most basic instincts. And although you can argue that ads do the same, the thing is that on ads, if they’re regulated and suited to the broadest public consumption, the appeal to the basic instincts has to be much more subtle. That makes it is less direct and less capable than porn for driving the tech resources to its development. But the difference may not be as substantial as I imagine it to be.