Human desire and the internet couldn’t seem further apart. One is raw and primal, flesh and blood – it couldn’t be more, well, human. The other is clinical and sterile – a string of ones and zeros.
However, if you peer a little closer, you’ll notice they’re not only connected but actually symbiotic.
Take one of the first computer-generated mosaics ever made, for instance. It was of a nude woman, scanned and hung up on an office wall as a prank. This image, though initially controversial, ended up in a permanent collection at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
Meanwhile, one of the earliest operating systems was called Sex OS. And the humble JPEG, now one of the most ubiquitous digital assets, came to be when researchers at the University of Southern California used an image of a Playboy model to test their compression algorithm. The model in question, Lena Forsén, is now considered the grandmother of JPEGs.
“Technology is actually quite messy and slimy, not cold and sterile,” says Mindy Seu, an American artist and technologist dubbed “the internet’s sexual historian”. “We bring our very human experiences into online environments.”
It’s this “messy and perverted” side that Seu explores in A Sexual History of the Internet, a participatory lecture-performance set to take place as part of Vivid Sydney in June. The event encourages audiences to read lecture citations aloud through shared scripts on their phones, thus revealing how technologies have long driven – and been driven – by our deeply human desires.
The internet’s silent, sexy architects
From personal websites and chat services to higher-bandwidth streaming platforms, most of the earliest digital assets were first adopted by the adult industry. Porn performers were the vanguards, the “silent architects”, of the internet age.
“To put your image online is to be in dialogue with pornography,” Seu says, quoting video and performance artist Ann Hirsch. “There are sex workers who have been pushing forward these interfaces and environments for a long time because they naturally have an innovative spirit, and also because their online actions have largely been policed, so they were forced to be early adopters of novel technologies.”
For example, compressed video streaming software used by early porn companies helped pave the way for YouTube. They were also early adopters of search engine optimisation, VPNs and automated gateway systems, all used to help mature content capture audiences, and to keep payments or chats private and secure.
It’s not just what’s on the internet, Seu notes. Human sexuality has also driven the internet’s design. Take the computer mouse, for example, the shape of which some argue resembles a vulva.
“The computer mouse has a very yonic shape,” Seu says, referencing Canadian scholar Ali Na’s essay The Fetish of the Click.
“You can cup it in the palm of your hand; there’s this spinning wheel in the centre that very much models the clitoris. In the early ’90s, this Australian art collective VNS Matrix had a manifesto where they said the clitoris was the direct line to the matrix, which might become a metaphor: clicking a computer mouse gives you access to online environments.”
JPEGs to data BDSM
The internet has come a long way since the early days of JPEGs. Sex pervades online spaces, from OnlyFans and PornHub to tech domination and “algospeak”. For many, it’s generally the source of their sexual awakening.
As the internet has evolved, Seu says, there has been an influx of new digital-specific fetishes and kinks. For instance, dominatrix Mistress Harley pioneered “data and tech domination”.
“She doesn’t use nudity or in-person sex, but she manipulates this thing we were taught to be afraid of: parental controls,” Seu says. “She gets remote access to her [submissive’s] machines, and can control their bank accounts, their social media, she can see their hidden files and folders.”
Sexual content is also a massive driver of virtual reality. While video games are slowly adopting the medium, the adult industry is already deep in “teledildonics”, which are sense-simulation devices that sync with digital signals. You can imagine what these may be used for.
The Manosphere, revenge porn and social media bans
There are darker sides to the internet’s sexual history. Toxic, misogynistic views on sex and gender are being spread by “manosphere” influencers, and revenge porn or non-consensual sexual deepfakes are proliferating. Is the internet to blame?
“It’s chicken or the egg,” Seu says. “I believe technology is born into social environments and that they replicate and accelerate historical and social situations. But I wouldn’t say it’s the technology itself that is causing harm. It’s merely replicating larger social conversation.”
It’s partly because of this that social media has been banned for under-16s in Australia. In theory, age verification is positive, Seu says, but it can lead to unintended consequences. For example, age verification legislation to do with porn websites has led to more underage people accessing sites that don’t require proof of age. These sites, subsequently, are generally less regulated and contain fewer protections.
403: Forbidden
As sexual content proliferates online, the degree to which it is policed has also intensified.
Online platforms of the ’90s were not considered liable for user-generated content, thanks to the Communications Decency Act, Seu says, which made the internet a relatively discursive, open space. However, new laws in the 2010s reversed this.
“Platforms were then scared of litigation, so they moved in the opposite direction and tried to wipe all instances of sexuality – depictions of nudity, sex, porn. A big example was Tumblr. They used this content moderation algorithm to do a huge wipe.”
This also leaked into payment systems, Seu adds. MasterCard, for example, can’t be used on PornHub now, leading to a rise in cryptocurrency payments. It has even changed the way people speak online, with many self-censoring with “algospeak” (coded language to avoid being caught by automated content moderators), such as “seggs” (sex) or “corn” (porn).
“When there’s a white market, a black market will emerge,” Seu says. “People will find a way to distribute and it might even increase demand. It doesn’t prevent things from circulating. It just encourages circulation in a very dangerous way.”
By now, it’s clear we can’t eliminate sex from the internet – they’re integral to each other. The goal instead, Seu says, is consistent regulation so that everyone can remain safely “turned on”.
Mindy Seu’s A Sexual History of the Internet will take place at Sydney’s Town Hall on June 7 as part of Vivid Sydney.
Vivid runs from May 22 to June 13. Read more about the festival:
Nell Geraets is a Culture reporter at The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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