Cultural Impacts of Easy Access to Pornography on the Internet

The Internet is awash with sex. In a few hours, an innocent can see more of the pleasures and perversions of sex, in a greater number of close-up couplings, than a eighteenth century roué could experience in a lifetime devoted to illicit encounters. The Internet is the greatest sex education machine — or the greatest pornographer — that has ever existed. Having spent time teaching at a Muslim university, where the torrent of Internet sex was a hot topic, I would not underestimate its impact on traditional societies. There is a saying that rock and roll brought down the Soviet Union; once the Soviet subconscious had been colonized the political collapse followed easily. The flood of utterly uncensored images of sexual pleasure that reaches every corner of the world is certainly shaking the thinking of young men and women in the conservative societies that I’ve worked in. Where the conflicting emotions that have been unleashed will lead, I cannot tell.

Alun Anderson, If You Don't Change the Way You Think, You Risk Extinction (January, 2010)

• culture
• internet
• pornography
• society
• technology