Will the Adult Industry Drive Android Adoption?

And really, having access to porn when you're out-and-about? Logistically, it doesn't seem like a high priority. Though, they do sell porn at the airport so who knows.

It's interesting to consider why the myth that porn drives innovation has such legs.

It strikes me as something of a modern-day fairy tell for the information industry, where the moral is that people who restrict (even patently offensive) speech lose economically.

In that context, as an advocate for openness, I can't help but see it as something of a virtuous lie. The truth is that technological openness is good for society (at least, I feel that way) and it is good for business far more often than it is not. But the case for both of those arguments are complex. The porn myth is a glib and memorable little factoid that --- while incorrect itself --- does hold in its moral a deeper if more nuanced truth.

Uhm, YouTube being big before adult websites adopting flash video isn't really true. And HD-DVD failed because Bluray offered porn and video games.

Not to mention that the article skips over a couple important points.

Granted, the iPhone will never see any sophisticated downloadable porn-tagging apps like described in this article, it still has the internet at its disposal. If just looking at pictures of naked chicks on your phone in public places is enough for you to get your kicks, then I don't really see any phone manufacturer having any advantage greater than just the speed, stability, and ease of use of each of their respective mobile browsers (and they nearly all use Webkit so speed for that is pretty dead even).

If moving pictures are more your thing, then any phone that can display flash will ultimately have the iPhone beat, but not without a fight. Little known fact that the iPhone can stream h.264 from any site, not just YouTube. So any website that serves up h.264 through flash can make a mobile site using the same videos without the flash player. The only site I know of that does this is m.pornhub(dot)com (obviously very NSFW so no accidental clicking), but yes, it exists.

On the other hand, didn't porn help establish BitTorrent as a viable P2P protocol? I may be misremembering, but I feel like delivering adult movies was an early driver of BitTorrent adoption.