The Porn Drift: Pornography, Technology and Masturbation

The author introduces a concept he calls “the porn drift” and which describes the rift that exists between the experience of sexual intercourse as presented in pornographic moving pictures and that which is acted out in the corporeal world with another human being. He traces the cause for the porn drift to the technologically determined nature of pornography, which prevents it from conveying the most real experience involved in sexual intercourse with another human being: the tactile experience. Touching upon the historical development of pornography, he tries to understand the emergence and prevalence of the so-called “gonzo pornography” on the Internet and sees its existence as the tool for the pornographers to compensate for their genre’s inherent inability to convey the real sexual experience to the consumers. Finally, the author describes what he sees as an emerging new sexual practice that might greatly influence sex life in the new millennium, a practice defined by the merger of advanced information technology, hard-core pornography and masturbation.