But there's not a big demographic for porn-lovin', war-lovin' blog readers.

I think it's huge but hidden. It's like someone said about Fox News -- they discovered an untapped market -- half the country.

How bout we consider the not so progressive aspects of war. The burning of the Library of Alexandria for example. I would agree that war certainly changes the course of human evolution, but I would disagree that the change is an advance in human ingenuity. Not to even contemplate the loss of human life that may have had the potential of great achievement. What about the Russian conscript who would have fathered the inventor of cold fusion had he not died in Stalingrad. Stupid example maybe, but you see where I am coming from?
As for porn...

Ace, it's all about the 3 b's. See, guys like only three things, or substitues for the 3, and they all start with b. Boobs, Booze and things that go BOOM. Combining these generally results in a dispraportional number of 13-45 yr old males in your audience. Pro-wrasslin? Boobs & fighting, which is just fists & elbows going BOOM. Hunting? BOOM sticks & beer man...the deer are just an excuse. Strip clubs, perhaps the most diabological way to detach money from young bucks who don't have anything better to spend it on, but they get boobs and booze in return...

Oh, come on. Everyone loves porn. The SpikeTV channel is nothing but warNporn. The History Channel is war porn. And drugs don't make you.....ummmm..... What were we talking about?

You and Bob have got a point. A couple of other war-driven changes: Cigarettes first became popular as a way of conserving tobacco when Europe was under embargo during the Napoleonic Wars. Canned foods were developed as a French military project for provisioning the troops. And millitary medicine has dealt with a whole series of issues, including scurvy, malaria, and yellow fever.

On the porn front, my guess is that new communications media always erode the social power structure, and catering to socially taboo tastes is one aspect of that erosion. The printing press was a major factor in the Reformation and, later, the American and French Revolutions, but it’s surprising how many of the same printers who were running off political tracts were also supporting themselves by printing stuff like Jack Shaftoe in ye Sultane’s Hareme. Paul Johnson discusses this, I think in The Birth of the Modern.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

People are never at greater need than when the very survival of their citizens depends on a better supply line, a better weapon, better armor, better organization, better strategy and speed of execution, etc.

NOW: What technological advances is porn mainly responsible for? And are they outweighed by tech contributions from the University research system, or non-porn private industry?

work nanotech into this somehow and you can get another Instalanche

Dennis Leary: I'm your average white suburbanite slob. I like football, and porno and books about war. I'm an asshole etc.

This was written in the dark ages before the internets got HUGE. Remember, they had to read books back then.

I used your article as a catalyst for a response because strangely enough I had a conversation just like this the other night when I was self-medicating my frazzled id in a local DC dive bar.

"NOW: What technological advances is porn mainly responsible for? And are they outweighed by tech contributions from the University research system, or non-porn private industry?" Posted by lauraw

I read some article that said internet porn has been responsible for most of the advances in streaming video technology and video codecs.

Girlie man? Ace is a girlie man? hmmmm...interesting!

Just think of the progress we could make if war and porn were combined!

Just think of the progress we could make if war and porn were combined!

Posted by: TallDave on April 8, 2005 04:31

You saw those Abu Ghraib photos, right?

Just think of the progress we could make if war and porn were combined!

Posted by: TallDave on April 8, 2005 04:31

You saw those Abu Ghraib photos, right?

Sorry, but I think it's a pretty worthless argument.

It does have the 'sex and blood' sensationalism to grab attention.

Not to mention, drugs are dismissed as bad for you, making war better - but which is worse for you, drugs or war? How much 'progress' has been lost to war?

No, this argument is more notable for novelty than for merit.

Sure, war brings change, so you can read a lot into that - but that hardly makes this trite point useful, when you consider how many other important aspects there are to to war.

As for porn - I'm not sure we really understand its impact yet, good or bad.

We may yet find interesting sociological impact analagous to the easy availability of food, combined with our natural condition, leading to obesity - or we may not and it might be harmless pleasure (to the consumer if not all the models).

I think it's pretty much a given that demand drives the development of technology, it ordinarily goes without saying, dosen't it?

But this guy seems to be assuming that what drives technological progress is the lowering of some kind of inhibitions. Like people are thinking "I'd love to be able to harness the energy of the atom, and the only thing stopping me from figuring out how to do so is that it isn't worth the risk until it becomes imperitive that I do so before the Axis powers do". He's got to be some kind of transhumanist. Lighning bolt, lighning bolt!

i need to know how necessity is the mother of invention fathered by experience. I want oyou talk to me in reletion to the stone age civilization