Most people thought it was a joke, and maybe it was. Online sex stories and erotic conversations consume an unknown and unknowable portion of the global telecommunications bandwidth. Even more is swallowed by graphics. All are harbingers of things to come. It is as if all the incredible advances in computing and networking technology over the past decades boil down to the ability to ship images of turgid members and sweating bodies everywhere and anywhere at anytime.
High tech is being perverted to low ends, they cry.
But it was always so. There is absolutely nothing new about the prurient relationship between technology and sexuality. Sex, as we know, is a heat-seeking missile that forever seeks out the newest medium for its transmission. William Burroughs, a man who understands the dark side of sexuality better than most, sees it as a virus that is always on the hunt for a new host - a virus that almost always infects new technology first. Different genders and psyches have different tastes, but the overall desire seems about as persistent over the centuries as the lust for bread and salvation.