Drugs, Craps, and Porn
How our vices can propel technology forward
Drugs are bad. Gambling will make you broke. Porn is addictive. All we tend to hear about these things is how bad they are for society. But what if I told you these are the very things that could propel technology forward? You might say I’m crazy, but it’s happened before. Let me explain.
To start, let’s talk about pornography.
The Internet is for Porn
Yes, yes, I know. It’s a taboo. We’re not supposed to even mention the word in a supposedly-professional-seeming-article. But we’ve got to face some facts. The internet’s bandwidth wasn’t expanded merely for emails or shopping. Just like the song tells you, the internet is for porn. It was a key rise in its adoption, not to mention the rise of streaming.
Film, photography, painting, sculpting: Porn, porn, porn
It’s funny that we few depicting nudes and sexual acts as art today. But how was it viewed before? Some of it predates language, but is it really surprising Egyptian hieroglyphs depicted some dirty acts. Or that the Kama Sutra is still one of the dirtiest illustrated books in history? Or that the Renaissance was attacked relentlessly for its ‘crude’ and ‘vulgar’ depictions? Some of the first photographs made? Nudes. Some of the first films created? Sex. Hell, even VCRs have a good deal to thank for it.
Cryptocurrencies are for drugs
Here we go again. Yes, cryptocurrencies create a coin that doesn’t have to be enforced with violence, nor controlled by a central authority. Creating contracts the Universe has never seen before. But, what most libertarians won’t tell you, is most people don’t care about that. They just want to get high. Bitcoin, and especially Monero, are used for drugs and hookers.
Decentralized Apps are for Gambling
Maybe not as taboo as the others, but it’s still a fact blockchain enthusiasts (such as myself) have to acknowledge. Because, though Decentralized Applications (or Dapps) create serverless, zero-trust, censorship-resistant apps with no down time, here is a very scientific graph depicting how people feel about it:
They might care a little, but not enough to go through the trouble of installing Metamask, creating a virtual wallet, storing a private key, creating a Coinbase account, buying crypto, transferring crypto to their Metamask wallet, then hope it will somehow work (because Satoshi help them if it doesn’t). What do people care about? Being able to gamble without the government getting in their way.
VR is going to be used for Porn
And it all comes full circle. Porn’s importance is going to see a Renaissance with the advent of VR. The industry will have a strong incentive to make VR fast, realistic, and easy for normal people to use. It has already begun.
You could view these all as negatives, humanity using such great tools for its most base pursuits. But you can also view the technology as an engine, and all of humanity’s vices as the fuel. Are you going to complain that the fuel isn’t Super Unleaded? VR and other technologies spent decades in the desert, stuck, with an empty tank. Are you really going to turn down the first can of gas someone hands you? Fortunately, you don’t have a choice. And from humanity’s vices, technology will catapult to the worlds never before known.
