The adult entertainment industry has a reputation as a technology bellwether, but these days that’s largely thanks to its past accomplishments.
Chris Morris | CNBC
An attendee at the 2015 Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas demos the Oculus virtual reality glasses.
While porn was certainly responsible for VHS tapes besting beta and can likely lay claim to leading the charge in online streaming video, it hasn’t done a lot to push the needle in several years.
“To be honest, if someone asked me what has been the biggest innovation we’ve made [as an industry], I could not list anything in the last 10 years,” says Laszlo Czero, CEO of Docler Holdings and Jasmin.com.
Porn may be on the verge of a technological renaissance, though, with several companies looking to renew the industry’s reputation as trailblazers. And they’re counting on things such as virtual reality and remote-controlled haptic devices to help lead that charge.
“You can’t start a [virtual reality] company without something that appeals universally to people, and porn does that,” said Brian Shuster, founder of Utherverse. “The adult entertainment we introduced [in the early days of the World Wide Web] was really a much lower quality product than what magazines offered, but people still flocked to it.”
