20 Years Out

(This is a tongue-in-cheek post.)

During my undergraduate studies, I recognized a truism about visual media, and I cognized it as follows:

"As a medium decreases in cost and increases in availability, the amount of pornography carried by said medium will increase exponentially."

I say this is a truism because pornography has followed every major media advancement in human history, and people are always conscious of it in one way or another. This brief article will not attempt to pass judgment on pornography; that is an exercise in futility. One can no more judge pornography than one can judge the genetically-carried rituals of the birds and bees. The production of pornography is as ingrained into the human consciousness as courtship rituals are ingrained into the genetic code of Papua New Guinea's Bird of Paradise. Believe it or not, anthropoligsts, visual theorists, and art historians spend a lot of time talking about porn, so it must be a matter worth studying.

(One can, however, judge the ethics of those who produce pornography. That is better left to individuals who received a grade higher than a 'B' in an ethics class, which I clearly did not. As for those who request a definition of pornography, I am as stumped as anyone. If we include sexually explicit material, why not include violence, and other types of adult entertainment? The definition is intentionally left broad. The best definition I can offer is that pornography is purely about 'looking,' as opposed to the 'thinking' that occurs in content-rich media.)

Instead, this article will trace the incursion of pornography into every new visual sphere from the Classical era to now, in both Eastern and Western cultures. At the end of the journey, we shall see that whether we like it or not, The Next Big Thing will be co-opted to produce more and more advanced types of pornography.

Classical Statuary
In the Greek classical period, sculptors refined their mastery over the stone medium as they produced sexually charged statues for their patrons. One has to earn a living, no?

In India, racy pictures covered temple facades, and served as both a didactic tool about cosmogony and as a guide to sex for Indian princes.

Renaissance Painting
The Duke of Urbino commissioned Titian to paint a marriage portrait of his wife. Using atmospheric perspective, depth of field, naturalistic proportions, and complex symbolic imagery, Titian painted a sexy portrait of the Duke's wife for a private drawing room.

Ukiyo-E
Ukiyoe-E, or woodblock prints of the 'floating, physical world,' were a very popular medium developed in Tokugawa Japan. Woodblock prints were very inexpensive, with some costing as little as the price of a Big Mac at McDonald's today. In line with my hypothesis, the Shunga (or Springtime) prints of pornographic stories and scenes became very popular as the cost of woodblock decreased. Obsessively violent imagery, as exemplified by YoshiToshi, also appears in Japan at the end of the Nineteenth century.

Photography
I like to joke that five minutes after a Frenchman invented photography in the 1830s, someone snapped the first nude photograph. With that in mind, the occurrence of explicitly pornographic materials also coincides with public access to the photographic process and materials. Strangely, nudie decks of playing cards evolve at about the same time.

Moving Images (Film)
Little did Edward Muybridge know that by the 1890s and 1900s his invention of the moving photograph would turn towards adult entertainment. Old fashioned Nickelodeons allowed viewers a cut-rate peep show.

The invention and propagation of the video tape in the 1970s and 1980s also lead to a revolution in the production of pornography. Anyone with a video camera could record violence, low-brow humor, or sex at their leisure. And they did. They still do. God bless YouTube!

Offset Printing
The same printing process that allowed newspapers to carry photographs allowed Playboy to circulate to tens of thousands of people for a relatively low subscription price (and in color!).

The Internet
There was a time when the internet was purely about text based data transmission. Then someone the chatroom.

Jokes about internet pornography are old hat, so suffice it to say that turning your safe-search filter off on Google Image Search will give you a crash course in pornographic content. Don't believe me? Search for the words 'ball' or 'Christianity.' You'll be as surprised as I was.

Video Compact Discs (VCDs) and Digital Video Disc (DVD)
The pornography industry was a major influence in the adoption of DVDs as a standard technology. Newer, higher resolution images were seen as a big selling point for these companies.

Second Life
The first widely accessible Multi-User Virtual Environment is now 30% pornography! The remaining 70%? I still haven't figured that out yet.

20 Years From Now
20 years ago, no one would have predicted the rise of the Internet, or the almost boundless reach of its power. 20 years before that, no one would have predicted the growth of the personal computer as a personal device.

Predicting technologies 20 years into the future is a an exercise in futility. The fundamental technologies that will underpin future technological advances are still in their nascent phases. Nano technology, holographic displays, haptic interactive devices, cerebral implants; all are pure speculation. We cannot know, or even begin to know what the 21st century will hold. We should instead focus on cultivating our abilities to exploit opportunities as they arise, so that when the Next Big Thing arrives, we will be ready to pounce on it.

I'll make you one guarantee, though: the second the Next Big Thing shows up in the home, office, and mobile sphere, someone will find a way to use it to deliver porn.