Funny meeting you here!
Among other items, the Caslon people give us an enticing, and extended, quote:
The "dirty little secret" of Al Gore's ostensible
creation, the Internet, is that the so-called prosperity it is fueling, is actually
being driven by American Baby Boomers' craving for smut. That's right. Pornography.
Cybersex. In politically correct lingo, the Internet is now America's "personal
choice for in-home sex-care providers." In fact, evidence now in the public
record, demonstrates that what is actually driving the so-called "technology
market," is a rock-drug-sex counterculture-inspired buying frenzy, which
official government agencies factor into their fake economic figures.
Wow! A "rock-drug-sex counterculture-inspired" anything certainly seems
to be the sort of thing that I'd love to join! But doesn't that sound just a bit
too conspiratorial? It's hard not to click over to the source and check who wrote
that.
Which is how I learned that what I thought was an extensive quote is actually
only a very small part of a rambling article from 2000 on the Schiller Institute
web site titled: Cyberporn
and The New "Roman Empire" - Attack on Classical Culture and Your Children.
The Schiller Institute is the brainchild of Lyndon
LaRouche, one of the more fascinating, and questionable, characters in American politics. Today
in his 80s, LaRouche has covered political territory from the extreme left to
the quacky right, touching on just about every possible base in between. In a
sort of Forrest Gump fashion, he seems to have appeared at just about every important
political or social junction, somehow both influencing important decisions, yet
at the same time being neglected by the decision makers whom we're led to believe
have been consulting him. Nothing in the LaRouche cosmos seems average. Instead,
hyperbole is just about always called for. So it's not surprising that the quote
in the Caslon group article is tame in comparison to some other items in the original:
Like a good doctor forced to inform his patient that
he is terminally ill, it is best that I give you this news straight. In the
month of January 2000, 17.5 million Web surfers visited pornography sites via
their home computers, a 40% increase over the previous four months.
Online porno is now nearly a $2 billion-a-year industry, and expects to exceed
$5 billion per year within five years. According to the American Psychiatric
Association, 20% of all online electronic commerce is now pornography related,
and as many as 2 million people, classified as "sex addicts," spend more than
several hours a day surfing the Web. Research shows also that e-porn has the
highest rate of profit of any online business, as high as 30%, thanks to low
labor and advertising costs, as compared to the massive yearly losses of Amazon.com
and other Internet giants.
That article, as, I guess, is true about most LaRouche inspired journalism, doesn't
have footnotes or references. I trust that these various claims (including one
right up my alley) are verifiable, though not necessarily true.
Go to: Desire is the mother of invention?, or
Go to: The plain brown paper envelope column.