Cherokee tradition is to never give a friend a knife. REH
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mike Spencer Sent: Sunday, July 17, 2011 3:23 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [Futurework] Infantilizing the public A bit tangential but not entirely OT: http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/shareable-google-news-badges-for- your.html >From the article: Starting today, in the U.S. edition of Google News, you can see how voracious a news reader you are by earning Google News badges as you read articles about your favorite topics. The more you read, the higher level badge you'll receive, starting with Bronze, then moving up the ladder to Silver, Gold, Platinum and finally, Ultimate. In my rural 2-room grade school in NH, in 1948, Miss Giles would put a stickum-backed star on a wall chart next to your name when she was pleased with you. Green stars were good but gold or silver stars were much better. When I was 6, that seemed very cool. By the time I was 11 or so, it seemed like manipulative frippery. Now some great, huge gigabuck corporation is going to give me -- or wait, that's "legitimate in some way my ability to display" -- a cute little icon in order to......what? Make me feel important, eh? Persuade me to put my identifiable and marketable eyeballs on more pages of ads? "Jeez, I'm bored with all this $WHATEVER but if I just fetch nine more pages I'll get an upgrade in the border color for my I-Read-$WHATEVER merit badge." Yow! Coupons, air miles, loyalty cards, "free" 30-cent hat with the purchase of a car [1] -- The mere existence of all this crap represents a calculated attempt to infantilize the public (regarded, though, as single-dimension "consumers") and its gleeful reception represents the success of that attempt. [Consumers are]...best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed [viz. celebrities]....something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. It has no mouth...no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections. [2] Every time you see an ad on TV or the net, every time you're offered a freebie, somebody that thinks of you that way is on the other end. And now, once again, back to the more carefully reasoned and responsible discourse that you expect from this channe^H^H^H^H^H^H list. - Mike [1] Against my better judgment, we recently bought a Toyota from the local dealership. I have not had a more unpleasant experience since I had thoracic surgery 35 years ago. The sales droid gave me a "gift" that I suppose was meant to be endearing, a good quality pocket knife retailing for less that 50 bucks but one that had been abused by a former owner. I infer that he picked it up at a yard sale along with other potentially "endearing gifts". My last (I hope) contact with the dealership was to return the knife with the explanation that I did not need to be reminded of how pissed off I was every time I used my pocket knife. Oh, yeah, and a silly gimme hat, too. Didn't bother to return that, just threw it away. [2] William Gibson, _Idoru_ -- Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~. /V\ [email protected] /( )\ http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
