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CYBER

How Sex Changed the Internet

CYBER

VICE

Tech News, News & Politics, Technology, News

4645 Ratings

🗓️ 10 November 2022

⏱️ 50 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Without sex there would be no internet. From the moment the servers spun up, users were trying to figure out how to use instant connection to pleasures themselves and each other. The history of sex and the internet are intertwined. And what feels like new problems in the space: banking woes, hate speech, harassment, and moral panics about children are all much much older than you think.


That’s the subject of the new book How Sex Changed the Internet. It’s out on November 15 and it’s by Motherboard Senior Editor Samantha Cole. She’s here with us today to talk about breasts, BBS’, boy’s clubs, and the broad strokes of the culture war.


Buy Sam’s Book Here


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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

It's got the code. It's going to launch.

0:10.4

It's a unit system. I know this.

0:14.7

It's how all the files of the whole park. It tells her everything.

0:18.7

Sir, he's uploading the virus.

0:21.5

Eagle One. The package is being delivered.

0:24.5

Hello out there on the internet.

0:27.0

I am Matthew Galt, and this is cyber.

0:30.0

No, without sex, there would be no internet.

0:33.3

From the moment the server spun up, users were trying to figure out how to use instant connection to pleasure themselves and each other.

0:41.3

The history of sex and the Internet are intertwined.

0:43.8

And what feels like new problems in the space, banking woes, hate speech, harassment, and moral panics about children are all much, much older than you think.

0:52.9

That is the subject of the new book, How Sex Change the Internet.

0:55.8

It's out next week on November 15th, to be exact.

0:58.8

And it's by Motherboard Senior Editor Samantha Cole,

1:01.3

and she is here with us today to talk about breasts, BBS's, Boys Clubs,

1:05.1

and the Broad Strokes of the Culture War.

1:07.5

Sam, thank you so much for coming on to the show and walking us through this.

1:12.0

Thanks for having me as always.

1:14.6

All right. So you and I both grew up online in the very specific, like, early days of the

1:21.2

internet. And there's a large part of like the portion, the beginning portion of this book

1:25.3

that is kind of about that, like what that world looked like and how it felt and what it was like to be there.

1:30.6

So can you kind of set that scene?

...

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