Technically Incorrect

I tend to believe that life's pleasures should be experienced with real human beings, relatively sober, and free of excessive chemical content.

However, I understand there are those who make use of search engines to fuel their various needs, including those of pornographic succour.

Which brings me to Bing.

There seems to be some agreement among the cognoscenti that Microsoft's fine search engine offers optimal results for those who are seeking the filmic freshness of the flesh. Blocking such freshness can also be a difficult maneuver.

You see, Bing has excellent video search properties. And you might be astonished to hear that one of the major types of video for which humanity's needy search is video of a pornographic bent.

However, TechCrunch claims to have encountered evidence that Bing has entered an entirely new realm of raunch.

An enterprising TechCrunch employee decided to google the term "pornography" and was perhaps simultaneously astonished and elated to discover a sponsored link from Bing.

No, there is no suggestion that Bing is the better search engine for drug paraphernalia.

(Credit: CC James Wheare/Flickr)

The artful ad was headlined "Free Video." It then extolled Bing's remarkable access to "thousands of videos."

Somehow, I feel there may be more than thousands.

I know those of a technical leaning might suggest that sometimes when you do quite a few searches in succession the ads don't seem to keep up, so the ads that you see for your second search might have been generated by your first search.

I was still dissatisfied. I could not understand why anyone would search "pornography" when the very simple "porn" would have clearly sufficed. Is the suggestion that only those of a elevated snootiness, those who refer to pornography by its full name, get the Bing ad?

Then I stumbled into a blog post by Aaron Goldman, who seems to be quite au fait with the digital marketing world.

Goldman claims that he googled "Google porn searches" and immediately encountered an ad for Bing. Now the minds of those of a suspicious disposition must truly be wandering and wondering.

I would never be the one to suggest that Microsoft deliberately seeks out porn business.

However, business is, indeed, business. So one wonders just how much awareness there is among bingers of this alleged arousing serendipity?

Sometimes, I wonder what the rest of the world is looking at.

And I espied that one of the most popular articles in the Independent newspaper was titled "iSex: How pornography has revolutionized technology."

At first, I assumed this was a piece about how highly committed individuals in Silicon Valley and other places of technological worship had resorted to pornography because they didn't have the time to enjoy relationships with real human beings.

Propelling the world toward enlightened modernity is very time-consuming.

However, this Independent opus, in words and pictures, actually purported to suggest that the needs of pornographic enterprises had thrust the technological world toward many of its finest achievements.

The story begins with the Super 8 projector, whose rise the authors put down to the "large amount of pornographic material that was quickly available for it." It was allegedly a favorite for frat house home movies.

This interesting history moved to the Polaroid camera, which, as I recall really did provide a sort of instant intimacy that no other camera had offered before. You didn't need to take it to the pharmacy for your most personal moments to be developed. They happened before your very eyes.

Then, there's VoIP. The article claims that this was created "to feed the porn market after frustrated internet users bemoaned the lack of 'dirty talk' online."

VHS is alleged to have had a dirty beginning too. Apparently "the rival Betamax tapes were not long enough to record a film, at only 60 minutes, and adult content was not available on Betamax."

And look for voyeurism has done for technology too.

(Credit: CC Stevie-B/Flickr)

The researchers suggested that porn was the reason Blu-Ray defeated HD-DVD. Which, given Blu-Ray's clear superiority, might suggest their view of pornography's technological influence is less than perfect.

Then there was pay-per-view and cable, which gave pornographers the opportunity to pump material into people's homes without having to deliver tapes in plain brown envelopes.

And then there's camcorders, the Web, even interactive TV, inventions that all allow for more personal, more varied, and more immediate communing with images of people communing.

I thought all this somewhat fanciful, so I turned my most alluring gaze toward academia for help.

I found a 1996 essay by a scholarly lawyer called Peter Johnson, published in the Federal Communications Law Journal.

Johnson declared: "Throughout the history of new media, from vernacular speech to movable type, to photography, to paperback books, to videotape, to cable and pay-TV, to '900' phone lines, to the French Minitel, to the Internet, to CD-ROMs and laser discs, pornography has shown technology the way."

Johnson's opus is quite extraordinary.

He writes sentences such as "Both English and Italian can trace their emergence as popular tongues partly to pornography."

Which he swiftly follows with: "The victory of VHS over Betamax, and the triumph of video rental and purchase over time-shifting, is a rare example of pornography specifically adopting a product and a method of retailing that drove its competitor from the market."

And please enjoy this hearty rendition of Johnson's: "When new media offer new markets, porn spies them quickly and rushes to fill them, like an amoeba extruding a new pseudopod where its skin is thinnest."

While the image of a brand-new pseudopod occupied the happy part of my inner matter, I still found the conclusion of his rather interesting study couldn't be be deflowered: "Far from viewing cyberpornographers as pariahs, society would do well to view them as mountain men and women in the mold of Jedediah Smith, who discovered and opened the passes of the Rockies for entire families to follow west."

While you might conjure a picture of the passes opening for yourself, I have a little question.

Currently, the porn industry is whining that its profits are being severely chafed. Does this mean that technological development will shortly grind to a embarrassing crawl?

Some are concerned that porn's salvation may lie in more mobile usage, there is a considerable fear that they will be frustrated by a lack of bandwidth.

Personally, I prefer Hollywood's notion that America is driven by violence rather than sex and that therefore it is military exigencies that drive technological invention rather physical urges.

However, if it is really true that pornography pushes technology, what invention will it give rise to next? Porn beamed to the inside of your sunglasses, perhaps?

It seems that adults continue to be shocked that teens are choosing to use the technology at their fingertips not just to say 'I'll Be Home at 10' and 'I Love You' but to send naked pictures of themselves to members of their target sex.

Last summer, there was outrage in Colorado. More recently, it seems that parents have been waking up in all parts of the country, removing themselves from re-runs of Sex and the City and Law and Order and howling that little Jenna has exposed herself by digital means to that ruffian from the rough part of town.

In Cincinnati, they talk about 'kids gone wild'.

Now Pennsylvania has taken its outrage so far past third base that home plate is but a slide(show) away. Three girls (aged, according to police, 14 or 15) who allegedly sent unclothed pictures and the three boys (aged 16 or 17) who allegedly received them were charged with child pornography.

If found guilty, not only could these kids go to jail, but they would have to sign on to the sex offenders list for the next 10 years.

According to the National Campaign to Support Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, 20% of teens admit to participating in sexting. And though sending such pictures is illegal, CBS News Legal Analyst Lisa Bloom offered some perspective: "What are you going to do, lock up 20% of America's teens?"

I know there are some people who might think this a good idea. And there will be some who believe the Pennsylvania prosecution might be a good idea. But what can it possibly achieve?

One can perhaps understand why kids send naked pictures of themselves- to attract attention for one misguided reason or another. One can even understand (and find despicable) the motivations of those who forward sexted photos for their own amusement and that of their barely legal and mentally able friends.

An example would be this case from Saratoga County, NY.

In 2007, a group of boys shared an image a 15-year-old girl sent to one of them. Then, because boys will be animals, they held a competition. The winner was the one who showed the finest artistic skills in using the girl's image. Yes, these fine chaps produced animations and other visual low-jinks. Even a nasty little PowerPoint presentation. They were rightly placed into the hands of the law.

(Credit: CC Enzo's images)

However, the Pennsylvania case seems a little grayer. The six teens were charged only because one of their cell phones was confiscated in class. Its owner had left it turned on, a violation of school policy. Does it not seem a little peculiar that someone, perhaps the confiscator, allegedly thought it perfectly acceptable not only to take the phone, but to nose his or her way through its contents?

Police Captain George Seranko said that the first photograph was "a self portrait taken of a juvenile female taking pictures of her body, nude."

So, um, OK. Naked pictures. But no ordinary naked pictures, according to Capt. Seranko. They "weren't just breasts; they showed female anatomy."

Before that last distinction could be successfully parsed, he added: "It's very dangerous. Once it's on a cell phone, that cell phone can be put on the Internet where everyone in the world can get access to that juvenile picture. You don't realize what you are doing until it's already done."

As with so many things in life. But is this a reason to prosecute the self-portraiting photographer and potentially branding her a sex offender for at least the next 10 years? Isn't the fact that she has risked her female anatomy being on the web till Armageddon punishment enough?

Is there really no other way to educate kids that they might be making problems for themselves? Will this prosecution suddenly force Pennsylvania's kids to limit themselves to photographing wildlife? Perhaps not.

Kids do dumb things. Just as their parents did. Technology can magnify those things and send them out into a much wider arena than ever before. Just as adults are discovering their own personal information (and, on occasion, a past they wish they could forget) has suddenly taken on a sometimes depressingly public air.

By all means, punish the boys and girls who receive sexted pictures and disseminate them in a crude, heartless and offensive way to the outside world. But in the Pennsylvania case, the boys have been charged with possession, not distribution. It is only the girls who have been charged with 'manufacturing, disseminating or possessing child pornography.'

Somehow, it seems as if the prosecutors are revealing more about themselves and their frustrations than did the teens.

I am indebted to Wired for raising something very painful.

The hauteurs and auteurs of pornography are feeling the pinch.

And the pillars of the pornographic community (I am not sure if they have a Facebook group) are beginning to admit that it isn't just the economy that is squeezing their bottom lines.

Paul Fishbein, founder of Adult Video News (a group thing that protects, so to speak, trade interests) identifies the web as a source of commercial agony.

"There's a battle with pirated or free material on the internet," he told Wired. "Much like the music industry, adult [movie] producers are trying to figure out how to stem free or pirated content."

(I am as grateful as you that Wired added the word 'movie' in there.)

Henry David Thoreau explains things so well.

(Credit: ktylerconk)

Not for a moment would I expect Steve Jobs to suddenly leap into this market and alter the meaning of downloading for ever.

But I know many would see this as one of the web's great moral victories.

In part because of Mr. Fishbein's hideously unAmerican belief that he and his members should be able to stem something that is free.

For years, critics might say, adult (movie) producers preyed upon the strengths of some and the weaknesses of many.

They sought to do it as cheaply as possible and to produce too many adult (movies) that debased rather than uplifted.

And now, in a business sense, they are beginning to experience the pain associated with being a bottom feeder.

Technology has pushed the world in many new directions and suddenly people not only can just do it for themselves, but distribute it themselves too.

Despite Mr. Fishbein's plaintive cries, this is not such a parallel with the music industry.

It is not as if people are choosing to download and share the harpsichord sonatas of Owen Thomas rather than the latest rumbling ruminations of Radiohead because they believe Mr. Thomas's music to be equally joyous.

They are simply saying to the adult (movie) producers: "We're just as good as you." Or as bad, depending on your artistic and moral perspectives.

I am told by those who frequent free online adult (movie) entertainment that the quality is constantly improving. From a very base low. Um, I mean, low base. I think I mean both.

It's funny, in writing about this stuff I'm wondering whether to offer any links. Ach, no. I am told by my handlers that readers here are far ahead of me, technologically speaking.

Aren't you?