No doubt a great many people will remember their first sexual awakening as a moment of wonder and awe, when the whole universe suddenly made
sense, and the limitless frontiers of human existence were realized. For some, there are the memories of that young lady from grade school that let you feel under her blouse, or perhaps it is the memory of accidentally walking into the boys' locker room and discovering that male genitalia come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. From the first laboured contact of a French kiss and onward, many of us look back fondly.
Then there are the rest of us who stumbled into the sexual world quite unexpectedly in a violent explosion of sweat and nausea, as the quiet whining of
ostensibly "blank" videocassettes spun magnetic eroticism into our minds. Play buttons snapping, heads engaging the tape spool, wrapped ever so delicately around the drive spindles -- oh, what a time! The door to the Forbidden Lands opened, terribly, irrevocably.
Technology, Einstein tells us, is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal. Yet look at how much technology has given us. In a world where sex
is peddled for purposes innumerable, inventive minds allow us to gaze, leer and drool in ways that we can scarcely imagine.
Of Inventions And Their Necessity
To say that pornography depends upon technology would be an understatement. A quick look at the historical context reveals a clearly delineated
tradition that follows the enduring marriage of these two great social regulars. Pen and paper were perhaps the first great leap for the proliferation of pornography, erotica -- whatever you might wish to call it. Whether the Kama Sutra, or perhaps the writings of Chaucer and the Marquis de Sade, whatever the form or degree of ribaldry for centuries the curious sifted through page after page of sexual exploit, illustration, and innuendo. Further down the timeline, a certain levered device called the printing press changed our view of sex forever -- quite an irony, since Johann Gutenberg first used it to publish a Bible.
It must have been a great day when photography entered this ever-burgeoning tapestry of erotica and technology. Oh, to be able to gaze upon the flowers of humanity in flagrante dilecto. And if anyone questions the application of such devices, pick up a copy of Hustler, Cheri, or any other such magazine. But wait! On the horizon... motion pictures! Improvements in film distribution media resulted in a steady growth for the sex film industry, allowing it to flourish alongside the established giants of print and picture. And what about VHS in the 1980s? Beta, the superior-quality, conveniently-sized, ruggedly-constructed videotape medium went nowhere during the format wars, all because Sony had something resembling a conscience. The fools. As the popularity of porno reached epic proportions, so did the popularity of the VHS format.
The Importance Of Size
With a 5 1/4" diameter and a thickness of around 2 mm, one might think the compact disk odd, unimpressive at best. Yet, to the world of modern media, it
is as legendary as John Holmes was to the world of porno. When introduced in the early 1980s, the compact disc was a watershed, a herald of a new age. Vinyl, that most venerable medium for musical expression, quickly fell before the enticing charms of this deceptively diminutive juggernaut. Coated in a thin veil of plastic and caressed only by a non-destructive laser, the CD was quickly recognised as the most versatile and, for all intents and purposes, eternal distribution medium.
"What can it do?" asked the hungry masses, their curiosity piqued by a promise of new and wondrous things. Oh, how the answers changed. Music, yes.
Yet at virtually the same time the CD was pressing out scores of music, the forces in Silicon Valley realised that the little silver disc could be made to hold 600 megabytes of uncompressed digital data. And, like the music industry before it, the computer world dropped its collective jaw as it did when circuit boards replaced vacuum tubes. Here was hitherto undreamed-of storage capacity. Who cared that it was read-only media? In a market where the size of computer packages such as CorelDraw and AutoCad had taxed the limits of 3.5" floppy disk storage, CD-ROM technology was a godsend. Some computer software programs, popularised by such companies as Lotus, Microsoft, and Borland, could be had on 25 or more floppy disks. Unless you owned a CD-ROM drive. Since a standard CD-ROM could hold the equivalent data of almost 500 3.5" floppies any of these large programs could be obtained on one CD. Now that's storage.
However, all of this oohing and aahhing over the storage capacity of CD-ROMs is almost worthless until we leave the world of technobabble and begin
discussing real-world applications.
Digitize It And Put It In
The first law of the CD world is that everything exists on a digital level. Pictures, video, and, of course, music, can all be converted into digital code and
stored on the disc. As soon as this versatility was accepted, codified and implemented, the popularity of CD-ROM on computer platforms began an exponential climb to the top of the cutting edge. Multimedia quickly became the buzzword when describing an age when you need only ask for words, sounds, or images, and receive with unparalleled quality and functionality. When the public asked the computer world to substantiate the viability of this new medium, titles such as Microsoft Encarta, CNN Newsroom and Automap Road Atlas sent the message loud and clear: with the amount of digital information it could bring to the end user, CD-ROM was here to stay.
Digital Debauchery
Is it any wonder that software distributors the world over soon realised that porn had found yet another niche? Paper, type, photography and film must
have dazzled their respective ages. These generations found a way to apply their toys to all of their favourite things, and sex was a big one. Our generation is no different. Fucking and sucking has never been this interesting.
So I stand in my local computer software store, staring at any one of a number of CD-ROM publications. And somewhere near the back, my eyes are
barraged by unending lists of digital sex. Oh, the titles, the titles: Virtual Vixens, 10 Inches For Cynthia, Busty Babes, New Wave Hookers. Why look, even Legends Of Porn Featuring John Holmes. Of course, mom and apple pie. Some are simply pornographic films on CD-ROM which can be viewed on any multimedia PC. Others are labelled "interactive", a misnomer at best.
Penthouse publishes an interactive title that goes something like this: A Penthouse Pet has been photographed from every angle imaginable. These poses have been assembled on the CD-ROM in such a way that the young lady is, in theory, complete and three-dimensional. Now for the so-called "good part." You, the user, are a Penthouse photographer. With your trusty camera, you can manoeuvre and rotate around the Pet with incredible realism. You can zoom in or out with high precision -- and when I say zoom in, let me tell you, you would not believe exactly how close you can get -- to any part of her anatomy. When you reach an angle and magnification you like, you take the picture, then do with it what you wish. As you may have guessed, the possibilities are great and varied.
Voyeur allows you to take video camera in hand and peer into the seedy and personal lives of your condo dwelling neighbours. Lesbianism,
sadomasochism, it's all there. Would you care to stalk and rape a particularly attractive female? Why, there are software titles that allow you to do all of that. And guess what? You need never fear legal reprisal. Now wait a moment. What we're talking about here is simulated rape, beatings, violence of all sorts, practice for decrepitide. I am forced to wonder if the porno peddlers ever stopped to consider what might happen if some sociopath decides that one day he's had enough practice. If such scenerios seems far-fetched, then I commend you on your optimism.
There are those who would call this type of software harmless venting, the safest sex. For myself, I will never cease to be amazed at our society's propensity for appealing to the lowest common denominator.
Disgusting? Perhaps. Exploitation, certainly. But keep in mind that we are seeing nothing new here. Ink, press, camera, projector -- all has coalesced into
an amalgam of flesh and fantasy, ready to be introduced to our aching groins in simply another novel method. That is the legacy of multimedia: bringing it all together. There have been outcries against this latest form of sexual fulfilment. There have also been forces which defend free speech rallying to the side of "virtual" porn. They would maintain that we have no more to fear from this new wave of computer-aided mental masturbation than from pornographic magazines or videos. As always, we need not look. Nor need we purchase. Fair enough, yet I think we may have missed the point.
The difficulty here is one that has been repeated incessantly throughout the ages. Perhaps we have allowed our fascination at the new and wonderful to shadow the moral questions that always need to be asked when the world suddenly changes.
I do not pretend to be a prude by any stretch of the imagination. Sex is a wonderful thing. I like it hot, wet, sticky, messy, kinky -- but digital? Well, that's
another story. The world of computer generated sex could make a wonderful tool for gazing into our sexuality. It can augment a sexual experience. It can help us to discover the secrets of good sex. Indeed, it can have a plethora of positive benefits. Others may disagree.
A Simple Dilemma
We may all wonder if there should be a place in our society for what has been described here. If we say yes, are we perverted? If we say no, are we
saying that censorship is alright? There is no need to start vocalising the tired fear of an Orwellian nightmare. However, there is also no reason to ignore it and hope that the issues iron themselves out come morning. As the popularity of digital porn rises, as it surely will, the moral debate will also increase. But before we drown in the politically-correct sea of rhetoric looming over the horizon, let me ask you the only question that matters: Is CyberSex for you? When you can answer this question, the world is a less confusing place. And that's as it should be.
In the U.S., there is no central authority. It is difficult to determine what and where material is appropriate. Interstate trade of "pornogrpahy" is strictly
prohibited, but what porn is remains a grey area. This has caused us to be very cautious as to what material we release. At Macworld Expo, our company was in the
Adult section which had a guard restricting entry to those under 18. We have heard that because we showed very explicit material, the adult section has been
discontinued [for future shows].
Comdex said that we were welcome as long as our material did not show nudity and if it fell into a pg-13 rating. We complied, and spent $3000 re-editing
our demo video. The second day into the show, the manager came by and told us to shut down. We showed him the video and reminded him that we had complied
with the rules provided. He stated that women, even when clothed, could not look suggestive, and for that reason we were being shut down. We are able to convince
him otherwise, but other exhibitors were not as lucky.
