Computer games are important for the hardware industry. Consumers don't buy new, more-powerful computers for business or Internet apps - they buy them to run the newest hardware-intensive games.

''Actually, corporations used to buy new, more-powerful computers whenever the new version of Windows came out. This created a boom-bust cycle which drove the entire industry. Of course, it was extremely expensive, so many corporations have now learned to stop doing that. I think the cycle has broken.''

True for corporations, but consumers don't care much about Windows upgrades.  They care about games, e-mail, and porn.

''And email is driving ever smaller networked devices. So what's porn driving?''

Which networked devices are you referring to?

''Beepers, cell phones and the like.''

Porn would be driving home-broadband, except that for most consumers, home-broadband isn't that responsive to consumer demand, being locked up in the hands of lazy State monopolies or corporate monopolies. I wonder if data storage companies have been getting into lobbying for more home-broadband: More home DSL -> More downloaded porn DivX ;) -> More people buying spare hard drives ...