- Graphics
Even before there were online images, BBS visitors and Internet geeks traded naughty ASCI images. The demand for girly pics certainly helped spur on early advances in computer imaging and graphics.
- Streaming Video
You can thank Debbie and her exploits in Dallas for your latest video conferencing capabilities. Porn helped hone streaming video before it went mainstream.
- High-Speed Internet Penetration
Sure broadband is great for getting work done and sending grandma videos of the kids. But we all know the real reason why so many people jumped on the high-speed superhighway...
- Internet Payment Systems
Before brick-and-mortars, publications and other mainstream organizations figured out how to monetize the Web, porn producers learned what did and did not work when it came to collecting moola online.
- Spam
From its earliest incarnations, spam has been primarily about selling sex, be it porn or V1agra.
- Internet Filtering
Modern day DLP and other content filtering technologies owe a lot of their early developments to the innovators tasked with stamping out porn in the workplace.
- Pop-Ups
Pop-up ads have been bedeviling Internet users ever since enterprising porn developers started using the medium to spread the word about their sites, sometimes in a surprising loop of hundreds of ‘em.
- Peer-to-Peer Networking
All that hoopla over music sharing is just a cover for P2P’s true purpose—to freely trade in nudie pictures and videos. According to the NPD Group, 60% of all P2P downloads are porn.