Human computer (sexual) interactions

There are few better examples of the pervasion of computing technology into private life than the proliferation of human-computer sexual interactions. Although the HCI community has become increasingly interested in leisure contexts, entertainment, emotion, affect, enjoyment and fun, it tends to ignore the fact that one of the ways many people have fun with their computers is by accessing pornography. Indeed pornography may well be the only reason that some people own home computers at all [8]. “Sex” and “porn” have been the most frequent Internet search terms since the Web became widely available, and terms relating to the topic are so prevalent that they have to be filtered from indices of current popular searches. All of the key issues of usability, accessibility, and (increasingly) enjoyability, which concern HCI, apply equally to pornographic applications. Yet searches of the ACM’s digital library yield no articles discussing, for example, the effective design of pornographic Web sites or the lessons that might be learned from successful pornographic applications. What work there is, very properly, addresses the prevention of crime, but there is almost no work on mainstream adult entertainment. New communication technologies have been used in the production and consumption of pornography with such regularity that the appropriation might be formulated as a general rule. Technologies such as pho-