Future of iTulip?

[lakedaemonian]

Re: VR instead of...

Isn't it the dirty little secret of the internet that the porn industry has been at the cutting edge of some technological innovation?

Didn't the porn industry provide early critical mass(or at least potential performance indicators) for big studio movies/TV with home video?

Didn't the porn industry spur early investment in online payment facilitation?

Didn't the porn industry spur early investment in video compression?

I would think VR would be an area of investment for the industry.

Moore's Law, The Buffett Effect, the Big Mac Index......"Porn Indicator" maybe?

[jk]

Re: VR instead of...

Isn't it the dirty little secret of the internet that the porn industry has been at the cutting edge of some technological innovation?

Didn't the porn industry provide early critical mass(or at least potential performance indicators) for big studio movies/TV with home video?

Didn't the porn industry spur early investment in online payment facilitation?

Didn't the porn industry spur early investment in video compression?

I would think VR would be an area of investment for the industry.

Moore's Law, The Buffett Effect, the Big Mac Index......"Porn Indicator" maybe?

it's going to be hard to do it on a bicycle.

[ProdigyofZen]

Re: VR instead of...

Does anyone know if EJ has posted in the subscriber section of the Tulip in the past month?

[jk]

Re: VR instead of...

Does anyone know if EJ has posted in the subscriber section of the Tulip in the past month?

yes he has, mostly in the virzoom thread, and a very brief comment on greece and china.

[ProdigyofZen]

Re: VR instead of...

yes he has, mostly in the virzoom thread, and a very brief comment on greece and china.

Thank you JK. Hum brief? How brief? A few lines or something that includes charts?

[Adeptus]

Re: VR instead of...

it's going to be hard to do it on a bicycle.

You're missing the point, and like underestimating the growing porn industry niche areas, not that I've ever heard of bicycle porn fetish.

Today a significant part of the porn revenue is from interactive porn sessions. I'm wondering if 3D interactive porn sessions may be a game changer. Did the porn industry grow when it went from paper to Internet pics? Absolutely. When it went from pics to movie/videos online? I'm going to guess yes. When it went from streaming video to interactive video? I would say that was a revenue add on. Going from low res video to HD? I'm not sure. Going from HD interactive video to 3D interactive video? I'm going to say that porn aficionados are probably going to give that a try, so long as the end-user devices are multi-use (games, bicycling, porn, etc) and low cost... likely ~5-7 years from now?

[seobook]

Re: VR instead of...

You're missing the point, and like underestimating the growing porn industry niche areas, not that I've ever heard of bicycle porn fetish.

Today a significant part of the porn revenue is from interactive porn sessions. I'm wondering if 3D interactive porn sessions may be a game changer. Did the porn industry grow when it went from paper to Internet pics? Absolutely. When it went from pics to movie/videos online? I'm going to guess yes. When it went from streaming video to interactive video? I would say that was a revenue add on. Going from low res video to HD? I'm not sure. Going from HD interactive video to 3D interactive video? I'm going to say that porn aficionados are probably going to give that a try, so long as the end-user devices are multi-use (games, bicycling, porn, etc) and low cost... likely ~5-7 years from now?

Through the first 4 months of 2014 a single company filed 38% of copyright lawsuits. Here is a great New Yorker article on the evolution of the adult industry. Revenues rose from medium to medium, until the free tube sites. And then even if revenues still rose, it didn't mean it was being distributed in the way it once was. As the porn themeed youtube clone sites created a glut of free content, a lot of the money went into promoting webcam shows (which are more of an interactive experience and harder to pirate) as mentioned in this NYT article.

The money generated by cam sites is hundreds of millions of dollars at least, and very likely a billion or more, according to industry analysts and executives. The money generally comes not from subscriptions or pay-per-view, but rather from credits or “tips”

...

Lacey has a boyfriend who does not much mind that she spends time naked in front of other men, but he does say he wishes that she would sometimes stop with the round-the-clock entrepreneurship and “turn off the brand."

It is all about the brand!

Here is a research whitepaper on the size of the cam industry. Not sure where I saw it referenced originally, but wherever it was had the following in it ...

mobile video chats and subscriptions could drive $2.8 billion in adult revenue in 2015.

The New York Times also published an article about strippers on Snapchat.

A lot of the aspects of innovations in online marketing did indeed originate in the porn industry. Lots of the stuff related to affiliate marketing, subscription membership websites., A/B split testing, etc. was widespread there years before it was in some of the more mainstream verticals.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: VR instead of...

A lot of the aspects of innovations in online marketing did indeed originate in the porn industry. Lots of the stuff related to affiliate marketing, subscription membership websites., A/B split testing, etc. was widespread there years before it was in some of the more mainstream verticals.

Good point...and some important and overlooked additions.

I just remember in the early 1980's I think it was, when my parents would stop at a pharmacy on the ride home to rent a movie......options were as limited as TV channels back then....literally a mere handful of movies and nothing from the major studios that was less than a few years old, if anything from them.

We would have also passed a number of adult stores/movies along the same drive.

Lust, greed, hate.

Pretty much the 2nd and 3rd would be the main drivers of iTulip discussions(directly or indirectly).

I don't recall a discussion about the 1st.

Specifically, porn/sex industry as a leading indicator of technological advancement.

I wonder how many folks who directly leveraged concepts/ideas/technology first explored by the porn/sex industry would freely admit to it?

-----

I don't do snapchat, but my wife and her friends do.

"Strippers on snapchat" superficially sounds like strip clubs are being disintermediated like taxi cab companies are by Uber.

No industry is safe by the sounds of things!

[seobook]

Re: VR instead of...

Specifically, porn/sex industry as a leading indicator of technological advancement.

I think a big issue with technology is it can connect common interests but is also a huge ever-present distraction in the background. There is always something to do, there it may not be worth doing!

I have a phrase for this "near, but not together." I think when I appreciated the absurdity of the degree to which it was commonplace was when I was at a funeral about 4 years ago and many people were pulling out their cell phones and checking their status updates while we were paying our respects to the departed. It felt so dystopian to me, to see that even as a great person passed, at that time and that place, status updates were the priority. I cringed, was angry, and sad. I get sad even thinking about it. And I didn't know the person who died as well as most the other people did due to my history (joined the military at 17 & have been a bit nomadic at points I guess).

I wonder how many folks who directly leveraged concepts/ideas/technology first explored by the porn/sex industry would freely admit to it?

Maybe I have been around marketing too long, but I really don't care where an idea comes from if it is effective, profitable & isn't hurting people. I don't particularly study that market to stay on the edge of what's next or such, but those articles I linked to hint at how many people are benefiting from those innovations of they realize it or not. For instance, perhaps the membership software used on this site or another site had a prior version of the software built and refined and polished on the back of a broad adoption of sites in a niche like that. Would it even matter the history of the software so long as it works well for its job and can be trusted? Software developers can change markets, programmers can be hired and fired, companies get bought out, etc.

I don't do snapchat, but my wife and her friends do.

When I shoot around in basketball I often listen to music on an iPod, but outside of that I try to minimize the whole mobile computing thing. I figure I sit too long at a computer as it is, that when I leave the computer I shouldn't have a less convenient form factor dictating the rest of my day. If I get lost I might pull out a map app, but other than that my phone is mostly a glorified grocery list app. And if my dog is in a cute pose it is picture time. But outside of that I try not to use it much.

In terms of not using & not getting some of the platforms, I am the same way there. Perhaps it is my age, but when I see stuff like this I think "blended throw up, mixed with puke" and can't see myself wanting to get into it.

I can see some of the VR game ideas being cool & like the idea of leveraging them to improve health and activity levels. But the Flipagram-styled apps built around micro-mixing pop culture feel far more foreign to me than pop culture itself.

"Strippers on snapchat" superficially sounds like strip clubs are being disintermediated like taxi cab companies are by Uber.

No industry is safe by the sounds of things!

I saw an article a week or two ago about YouTube users complaining about people stealing their copyright videos and uploading them to Facebook to get views and follows.

That is the YouTube model being used against YouTube itself.

I don't think there really is an easy solution.

Lots of instability and a constant state of reinvention.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: VR instead of...

I think a big issue with technology is it can connect common interests but is also a huge ever-present distraction in the background. There is always something to do, there it may not be worth doing!

I have a phrase for this "near, but not together." I think when I appreciated the absurdity of the degree to which it was commonplace was when I was at a funeral about 4 years ago and many people were pulling out their cell phones and checking their status updates while we were paying our respects to the departed. It felt so dystopian to me, to see that even as a great person passed, at that time and that place, status updates were the priority. I cringed, was angry, and sad. I get sad even thinking about it. And I didn't know the person who died as well as most the other people did due to my history (joined the military at 17 & have been a bit nomadic at points I guess).


Maybe I have been around marketing too long, but I really don't care where an idea comes from if it is effective, profitable & isn't hurting people. I don't particularly study that market to stay on the edge of what's next or such, but those articles I linked to hint at how many people are benefiting from those innovations of they realize it or not. For instance, perhaps the membership software used on this site or another site had a prior version of the software built and refined and polished on the back of a broad adoption of sites in a niche like that. Would it even matter the history of the software so long as it works well for its job and can be trusted? Software developers can change markets, programmers can be hired and fired, companies get bought out, etc.


When I shoot around in basketball I often listen to music on an iPod, but outside of that I try to minimize the whole mobile computing thing. I figure I sit too long at a computer as it is, that when I leave the computer I shouldn't have a less convenient form factor dictating the rest of my day. If I get lost I might pull out a map app, but other than that my phone is mostly a glorified grocery list app. And if my dog is in a cute pose it is picture time. But outside of that I try not to use it much.

In terms of not using & not getting some of the platforms, I am the same way there. Perhaps it is my age, but when I see stuff like this I think "blended throw up, mixed with puke" and can't see myself wanting to get into it.

I can see some of the VR game ideas being cool & like the idea of leveraging them to improve health and activity levels. But the Flipagram-styled apps built around micro-mixing pop culture feel far more foreign to me than pop culture itself.


I saw an article a week or two ago about YouTube users complaining about people stealing their copyright videos and uploading them to Facebook to get views and follows.

That is the YouTube model being used against YouTube itself.

I don't think there really is an easy solution.

Lots of instability and a constant state of reinvention.

Good post.

For me, I think some of the potential of VR includes better, faster, cheaper training for many industries.

I've had a lot of involvement in military soldier/subunit simulation training. VR has vast potential not just for better, faster, cheaper supplemental training, but also mission appreciation/planning.

On a personal level, I look forward to a civilian "gorgon stare" where say a tapestry of high res astronomy images both historical and real time can be accessed to "look" at space, even if just for entertainment purposes.

Maybe it will help spark the next generation of space industry to get some monkeys off this rock, after we use VR to explore planetary bodies remotely via robot/rovers.

I do think those massive online player game platforms will become more immersive than they already are with VR.

Which will surely be quite popular/profitable VR worlds.....but at the cost of further physical community disintermediation.


I'd like to see a movie made that captures for the current generation what was done so many years ago with the Graduate.

There's SO much material to leverage with encroaching technology that makes human interaction so much faster but so much more artificial and insincere.

[Polish_Silver]

posting on "the 1st"

Good point...and some important and overlooked additions.

. . .

Lust, greed, hate.

Pretty much the 2nd and 3rd would be the main drivers of iTulip discussions(directly or indirectly).

I don't recall a discussion about the 1st.

, , ,

I have posted on #1 a number of times. According to my world view, lust is for the most part not a vice, but rather an important
engine for happiness and relationship which is being suppressed by social values arising from the agricultural revolution.

I did not make a book review for "Sex at dawn" because I thought it was too far off topic for the forum.

[Woodsman]

Re: VR instead of...

...I'd like to see a movie made that captures for the current generation what was done so many years ago with the Graduate.

Lake, can you elaborate here? I think you are on to something.

What did "The Graduate" capture for the Boomers, in your opinion? What would that movie look like today in your concept of it? In what way would it be "The Graduate" of Millennials and post-Millennials? The idea fascinates me.

As I understand the film, it is "about" responsibility against aspiration and how a generation that compromised those aspirations turned on their children for refusing a similar compromise. I'm sure it's "about" other things too, but that's what it's always said to me since I first saw it as a teenager.

There’s a wonderful moment in the scene where Ben is trying desperately to have a conversation with Mrs. Robinson. Having been asked what she might want to talk about, Mrs. Robinson grudgingly suggests art, but then says that she knows nothing about it. Ben continues to push, trying to elicit stories of her circumstances, past and present. Throughout the entire scene, although Ben doesn’t see it, Mrs. Robinson’s face has a slightly pained expression, as she is forced to recall her life since meeting Mr. Robinson. Finally, Ben discovers that Mrs. Robinson was in fact an art major. He supposes that she probably just lost interest in the subject over the years, but it is clear in that moment her dreams have just been too painful to hold onto. Mrs. Robinson married Mr. Robinson while she was still in college as an art major, because a one night fling in the back of a Ford resulted in the birth of Elaine. She put aside whatever aspirations and dreams she may have had and dealt with her life in the best way she knew how, through alcohol and extramarital affairs.

Elaine and Ben, they won't do it. And their parents hate them because of it.

"It's too late," the elders say. "Not for me," retorts youth.

[ProdigyofZen]

Re: posting on "the 1st"

I have posted on #1 a number of times. According to my world view, lust is for the most part not a vice, but rather an important
engine for happiness and relationship which is being suppressed by social values arising from the agricultural revolution.

I did not make a book review for "Sex at dawn" because I thought it was too far off topic for the forum.

Work spares us from 3 evils: boredom, vice and need. - Voltaire.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: VR instead of...

Lake, can you elaborate here? I think you are on to something.

What did "The Graduate" capture for the Boomers, in your opinion? What would that movie look like today in your concept of it? In what way would it be "The Graduate" of Millennials and post-Millennials? The idea fascinates me.

As I understand the film, it is "about" responsibility against aspiration and how a generation that compromised those aspirations turned on their children for refusing a similar compromise. I'm sure it's "about" other things too, but that's what it's always said to me since I first saw it as a teenager.

There’s a wonderful moment in the scene where Ben is trying desperately to have a conversation with Mrs. Robinson. Having been asked what she might want to talk about, Mrs. Robinson grudgingly suggests art, but then says that she knows nothing about it. Ben continues to push, trying to elicit stories of her circumstances, past and present. Throughout the entire scene, although Ben doesn’t see it, Mrs. Robinson’s face has a slightly pained expression, as she is forced to recall her life since meeting Mr. Robinson. Finally, Ben discovers that Mrs. Robinson was in fact an art major. He supposes that she probably just lost interest in the subject over the years, but it is clear in that moment her dreams have just been too painful to hold onto. Mrs. Robinson married Mr. Robinson while she was still in college as an art major, because a one night fling in the back of a Ford resulted in the birth of Elaine. She put aside whatever aspirations and dreams she may have had and dealt with her life in the best way she knew how, through alcohol and extramarital affairs.

Elaine and Ben, they won't do it. And their parents hate them because of it.

"It's too late," the elders say. "Not for me," retorts youth.

Not being a Boomer(Squarely Gen X aged here) I can't really comment on their behalf.

I only saw it for the first time a good 30 years after it was produced.

To me, the Graduate screams of superficiality and artificiality.

I alway thought the "plastics" line worked on three levels:

1)The Brave New World that never has and never will come true in the way we all hope and the way marketers lie to us

2)The artificial "plastic" bubble( like sofa cushions in an Italian-American middle class home circa 1975) portrayed to the public masking underlying issues in the home/family.

3)When I think plastics, I tend to think of blowmolded plastics(which have really exploded as the comment was quite prescient) lying everywhere as persistent rubbish. They are empty and hollow like the lives of the film characters.

The film I see is one that could be remade as a cartoon with those little Minions my kids like.

Drones.

Affluent/wealthy, detached, empty, bored, manufactured, drones.....who believe in nothing.

The film I saw is wrapped in a bubble and completely detached from the world around it.

During the most turbulent times in modern American history, torn apart by the Vietnam War and generation/race/gender/social disruption at home there is no mention of it, nor is anything seen or even hinted at "ground zero" Berkeley.

At the drive in burger joint, they put up the top and windows to the Alfa when the slightest hint of hippy disruption enters their artificial bubble.

The ending is brilliant, not the typical American movie "happily ever after".

The ending is a question mark of wondering what comes after the instant gratification. Is there any depth beneath the superficial/artificial? Will there be any consequences?

-----

Just as I personally view a life of an endless summer lying by my parents' pool drinking beer and banging the family friend's wife empty and meaningless but without any real consequence, I view an "endless summer" of a brave new VR world equally empty, meaningless, and without consequence(at least directly).

I'm no Luddite.

I love how technology can enhance and enrich our lives.

I love food too.

The problem is people tend to love things too much, as seem with massive obesity numbers, substance abuse, and increasingly "digital overconsumption".

VR will go big.

For the military, for business, and especially for the consumer.

The consumer will be promised VR utopia but delivered VR tobacco and escapism with poor average consumer impulse control(see obesity/substance abuse).

Touching the stars is the promise, but the reality will be what it always is, instant gratification/escapism without substance or direct consequence(indirect consequence....that's the awkward fart on the room).

There was a film made called Disconnect that interweaves several people/families in an increasingly detached digital world showing the negative consequences of typical human behavior.

Good start. But more effective "social commentary as entertainment" work needed here.

20 years ago, if you said you had met a person online to date people would think you were crazy.

10 years ago, if you said you had met a person online to date people would have grudgingly admitted to considering or doing the same

Today, according to my young friends, if you are single(or otherwise) and NOT looking for a date online you are an anomaly.

Where are we going to be in 5-10 years?

I tried Google Image Search, I couldn't find a The Sims "Graduate Ben and Elaine on the back of the bus".......yet.

[santafe2]

Re: VR instead of...

To me, the Graduate screams of superficiality and artificiality.

It was important in its moment but looking back it's a bit embarrassing. It discusses first world issues before we hated the rich and successful. Film is something that should be viewed as a biography in its time and not a philosophical statement. Film is not often a smart medium. I'd never watched Gone With The Wind and when I finally did, I found it disgusting. Film is a statement about and a discussion of current events. It's not often that film is art.