How Porn has Changed the Internet

Despite the fact that pornographic material on and off the web is more popular than ever, it’s still one of those things that not too many people talk about. Some people may admit that they purchase such material, while others do their best to hide it in their own house. Then there are those others who shun it like the plague. Whatever your opinion on the subject, though, it seems we have pornography to thank for a lot of the web’s developments. Odd, but true, it seems.

PC World takes a look at twelve ways that porn has changed the web, and some are obvious, while others are less so. Unless you’ve been actively stalking the porn world since the beginning of the Internet, it’s unlikely that you’re aware of most of these. For example, did you know that online payment systems were first released for less-than-reputable websites?

How about streaming content? Live chat? Or broadband? The explanations behind all of these are found in the article, but with the good, also comes the bad. Porn is believed to be partially responsible for the start of mass e-mail spamming, malware and pop-ups… aka: the most frustrating aspects of web-surfing. So the question is, where will porn take us next?

Why would you limit yourself to watching videos of naked people when you could instead chat with them, suggest ingenious activities for them to undertake, test their grasp of Hegel’s metaphysics, and whatever else struck your fancy–all while using the finest in modern electronics? Porn plowed the path for video chat and its boring cousin, Web-based videoconferencing.