Porn stars are at CES, after all

You will be interested in the fact that, last night, Lexi Belle was walking around with an iPad on her chest encouraging people to press it and guess which was her real chest on the screen.

I was interested in the fact that Allison Vivas, CEO of Pink Visual, told me this: "This generation of girls aged 18 to 22 is the first that doesn't think porn is something dirty that their boyfriends do behind their backs."

You will be interested to learn that Alexis Texas and Kirsten Price were there. (The "you" I am referring to is my fine friend George, the engineer.)

I was interested to learn that Vivas, now in her early 30s, believed through much of her teens and 20s that porn was something frightful.

What changed her mind was applying for a job with an Internet marketing company that turned out to be a porn company. Now she was hosting this party to bring the geek community and the porn community closer together.

I wasn't sure this needed to be done. She insisted, though, that technology now gave geeks (and, of course, everyone) an unprecedented chance to experience sexual enjoyment through technology. They could create their personal porn star in a game, direct their own sex scenes, or use technology to simulate the senses such as touch and feel.

Vivas believes that porn is normal and that the world--especially the female world--is turning her way. Her company is beginning to target its online products towards couples, as well as single people.

"You'd be amazed what some people want a porn star to do," she told me. "For example, some might want her just to touch her knee. Some might want her to scratch her nose."

People, unlike most porn, are actually quite strange.

So, despite the fact that the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo was, for once, not coinciding with CES (it's next week), Vivas (and her friends) were in Vegas to survey the scene and remind people of their sheer normality.

Vivas comes across less as a rabid crusader and more as a nice woman from Connecticut who believes in what she does.

She knows, though, that there is still a gap between what she believes to be true among younger, more computerized generations and what she herself experiences.

When they ask her in her home state of Arizona where she works, she gives them the cross streets, rather than the company name or the type of business.

There again, her husband works in the mining business and that has set off all sorts of debates at cocktail parties.

Vivas is at CES to check out the gadgets too. There might be something Pink can put to use.

Porn has often introduced technologies well before other business sectors. It's a business in which the women make twice as much as the men. So last night Vivas chose to bring herself (and her friends) to meet the higher levels of the geek community. (Yes, this was a private party.)

One could see that some of the geeks were quite shy. To play with the iPad on Lexi Belle's chest, or not to play with the iPad on Lexi Belle's chest, that was their question.

Some were unable to answer.