LOG ON TO SEX - SOME NOTES ON THE CARNAL COMPUTER AND EROTIC CYBERSPACE AS AN EMERGING RESEARCH FRONTIER

Innovation in technology often provides new opportunities in the pursuit of deviance. The response or adaptation to these new opportunities takes the form of deviant technicways. New technology in the case of the computer promises to have an applicability for carnal behavior that is socially volatile in both its perversity and import. Through on-line bulletin boards dedicated to particular modes of sexual behavior, computer users with special sexual predilections can communicate with persons who share similar interests throughout the world. Computer communication of the erotic variety may involve mild flirtations, seeking and sharing information about sexual services available in different cities and countries, and seeking and sharing information about specific varieties of deviant sexual behavior. The computer has been used by some individuals to obtain child pornography from abroad, to contact youngsters to try to arrange meetings for sexual purposes, sometimes to misrepresent one's sexual identity (''gender bending'') for various reasons ranging from seemingly harmless ''on-line transsexualism'' (Van Gelder, 1985) to more convoluted (and possibly more sinister) purposes. The appearance of computer erotica can be interpreted at various functional levels and holds considerable import for social behavior. Just as the computer has begun to revolutionize social life, it may also revolutionize crime and the parameters of deviant sexual behavior.