And when can we expect this Jetsonian sexual future to arrive? "Probably about Septemberish," says Vivid's co-founder David James, 58, a burly transplanted Welshman. The technology, he explains, has already been shown to work over a local connection. A Taiwanese company has been tapped to produce a slick consumer version of the suit, possibly in neoprene. And multimillion-dollar possibilities for its use in commercial phone sex and other adult media have been lovingly sketched out. All that's missing, says James, is FCC approval, which he thinks will hinge on Vivid's proving the safety of the device. "If, for example, we transmit a signal over the Internet and something goes wrong, and the guy's wearing a pacemaker and he gets fried or something like that ..." he says earnestly. You can imagine the possibilities.

Barring any such mishap, though, what's to stop the feds from giving Vivid the go-ahead? It's not as if this were the first raunchy application anyone has thought up for digital technology. In fact, it's not even clear that digital technology would be the social and economic phenomenon it is today if it weren't for the kinkier purposes that millions of people are putting it to. Cybersmut, digital porn, the final frontier of erotic entertainment -- whatever you want to call it, the prurient use of new media like computers, the Internet and DVD is among the most powerful forces driving these technologies into our lives. And with every new digital innovation, porn is being reshaped, transformed into something that may not seem as futuristic as a cybersex bodysuit but in many ways represents a far more significant break with the past.

Not that there's anything novel about the cozy relationship between pornography and new communications technologies. Among the earliest daguerreotypes were many that showed prostitutes romping in little more than their stockings. And cinema was even more sexually precocious. "As soon as they started cranking that movie camera, they were making porn movies," says Constance Penley, a professor of film and women's studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Penley also cites, as media historians often do, the key role adult films later played in sparking initial sales of VCRs, as well as the porn industry's subsequent transformation by the influx of videocam-wielding amateurs. Whatever the medium, she observes, the pattern of its early cultural life has often been a familiar one: "It's there, it becomes available, and then sex is what drives people to explore all its possible uses."

By all accounts, though, the eagerness with which people are exploring digital technology's erotic possibilities is without precedent. And that, combined with the protean evolution of the technologies themselves, points to a long-term future for porn, whose ultimate dimensions are effectively beyond reckoning. To Vivid Video's president, Steven Hirsch, who got his start in the industry back when adult film was still 8-mm loops shown at stag parties, the present moment looks as ripe with opportunity as any he has witnessed. "I have seen the explosion of the adult industry," he says, "but with all of these new media, I really do believe we're just at the beginning of the real explosion."

For Hirsch's end of the business -- the feature-film market -- what's scheduled to blow up next is DVD. Tape still reigns as the medium of choice on adult-video shelves everywhere, of course, and no one expects DVD to take its place sooner than five years from now. But DVD has become a kind of fetish object for the industry, promising new avenues of profit growth in a market glutted with product. These new shiny discs are an added selling point for an audience grown much more discriminating.