The argument that pornography is a driver of new technology like the printing press, photography, videos, VHS and the internet and internet video has been advocated by mostly journalists, especially Patchen Brass in his Erotic Engine. It's one of those things that is kinda-sorta true.

It's much more accurate to say that pornography is an early adopter of new technologies, and the early adoption and promotion of new technologies in search of a profit is one of the prime motivators of pornography and the field. For example, the first use of the printing press was for Bibles, but it was quickly adoptd by early erotic writers that used it to critique the sate. The earliest use of photography was for artist;s models but was adopted for pornographic uses in the first years. The first uses of film were for amusement or short stories but was also adopted in a few short years for porn. Erotic motives are wrapped up in our technology and you can see tht in each development.

In my History of Photography class, we talked about this. I agree with u/vertexoflife about porn being a great adopter of new technology. The very earliest photography was painstaking and mostly used by scientists and inventors, but the moment that photography became more accessible and people started setting up photography studios, you had people like the Countess de Castiglione and plenty of others who took what were considered "risque" photographs for the time. The Countess in particular took a lot of photos in elaborate costumes and photos of her feet from over her shoulder, which was a sort of shocking perspective that hadn't been explored at the time. She was kind of the first selfie queen, which is in the area of pornography. Cartes de visite were sometimes made of sexual or pornographic images.

This wasn't a thing that was unique to photography, either. Cabinet paintings were popular with Rococo painters. My particular favorite is Francois Boucher. This particular painting was one we studied in class. It's especially salacious because of the position of her legs, which people described as just having had sex, basically. There was a ridiculous market for these "cabinet paintings" among wealthier married men.

Painting was far from a "new technology" at the time, but when Rococo, which was a new thing, was in full swing, cabinet paintings and rosebud-related sexual innuendo became very popular. In older painting, like in Renaissance painting, people would specifically pick certain scenes from classical mythology or from the bible so they could "get away" with painting naked women. Gustave Courbet, who was waaaay after the renaissance (but before photography), got himself into a lot of trouble for turning that on its head and painting nude women basically just because he wanted to, like in Olympia and L'Origin du Monde. So, even though painting itself wasn't new, new styles always brought forth new kinds of sexually enticing images. It wasn't a driver of the styles so much, but it certainly did earn some painters some money when they couldn't get academic or church work.