Pornography

50 Things That Made the Modern Economy

BBC

Business

4.8 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 27 May 2019

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Did pornography help develop the internet? And has the internet made it more difficult for porn producers to make money? From photography, to cable television, to the video cassette recorder, there’s a theory that pornography users are some of the earliest adopters of new technology. Five in six images shared on the Usenet discussion group in the 1990s were pornographic, one study claimed. But, as Tim Hartford describes, the internet has made it easier for people to access pornography, but made it harder for anyone to make money from it.

Transcript

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0:00.0	50 Things That Made The Modern Economy
0:09.5	With Tim Harford
0:12.5	If you're listening with children, you may wish to vet this episode before you decide
0:16.6	to let them hear it.
0:18.2	You have been warned.
0:20.4	And now, over to you, Kate Monster.
0:23.1	The Internet is really, really great.
0:26.8	Horrible.
0:27.8	I've got a fast connection, so I don't have to wait.
0:32.1	For porn.
0:33.1	There's always some new sight.
0:35.6	The Internet is for porn.
0:38.0	A song from the Broadway musical, Ava New Queue.
0:41.7	Innocent kindergarten teacher, Kate Monster, is trying to celebrate the usefulness of the
0:46.6	Internet for shopping and sending birth de greetings.
0:50.8	While her surly neighbour, Trecky Monster, insists that people really value it for more
0:57.0	intimate activities.
1:06.4	Is Trecky Monster right?
1:08.2	Well, sort of, but no, not really.
1:12.0	Credible-seeming statistics suggest that about one in seven web searches is for porn,
1:17.8	which isn't trivial.
1:19.2	But of course it means that six in seven web searches are not for porn.
	...

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