A brief, strange history lesson: 25 years ago today, a nude image was transmitted for the first time on the Internet. Actually, that original Internet porn, placed on "Alter-Net" (not the modern news site) on October 4, 1985, consisted of two images: one of Madonna taken from a then-recent Playboy shoot, and a second of the poster's wife mimicking the Madonna pose.
Before that (listen up, young people, I'm talking to you!), you had to steal your dad's Playboy or your grandfather's National Geographics if you wanted to see a breast. Which, believe it or not, was a better way.
And the fact that the first pics ever posted on the Intertubes were of (1) a celebrity, and (2) the poster's wife or girlfriend means that the very first Internet nudes were pretty much the same as 90% of the nudes on the 'net today. (Or so I'm told by, um, acquaintances.)
I still don't know whether to sigh wearily or laugh at how predictable we humans are. I guess both. Anyway, it's a milestone of sorts. And it says something about human nature, which is, as every poet knows, the same today as it ever was.
Or, put more succinctly: boys will be boys, there is nothing new under the sun, and while history doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes.
