December 3, 2005
high-tech business porn
What is “business porn” and how is it related to the culture of high-tech?
PB: I wrote an essay for the September 1999 issue of San Francisco magazine on what I term business porn, and also did a commentary along the same lines for the NPR program, Beyond Computers. Basically, the definition of business porn centers around the idea that so many business books and so much media coverage of business follows an entirely predictable, voyeuristic arc, where the moves are all routinized, details are fetishistically exact and there’s a strange repetitive lack of distinctive personality to it all. Plus, there’s always a guaranteed positive outcome. It’s roughly analogous to the way Harlequin Romances can be thought of as emotion porn, or Tom Clancy novels as action porn.
Lee Bryant, a very clever and talented fellow has a low opinion about porn, biz porn included:
Porn is for sad lonely jerk-offs. It is fake, manipulative and de-humanising.
I agree. Which is why it’s absolutely everywhere.
[Related Link:] “With porn, all things are possible.”
Man, I remember just gobbling up those HUGE issues of Fast Company back in the 90s. If only they had centerfolds…