Ian & Stuart's Australian Mac: Not for Sale/Another.not.for.sale (Australia).iso/hold me in your arms/Michael Ney's Cyberculture/Cyberculture/Info-Highway Advertising

Text File | 1994-09-02 | 16KB | 328 lines

Topic 316       Info-Highway Advertising
visionary       cyberculture zone        7:01 PM  Mar  1, 1994
(at peg.UUCP)

From: <peg!visionary>

From: "Bryan N. Larson" <[e-mail]>
Subject:      Advertising on the Information Highway

              ADVERTISING ON THE INFORMATION HIGHWAY:
                       CHOICES AND DILEMMAS
                           February, 1993

                           by BRYAN LARSON
                      [e-mail]

      Wired magazine's February, 1994, issue featured two
articles on the future of advertising on broadband multimedia
communication networks currently under development.(1) Michael
Schrage boldly predicts, "The future of media is the future of
advertising; the future of advertising is the future of
media...tomorrow's digital advertising will be inextricably woven
into networks and [virtual reality] fabrics."(2) Schrage,
Peppers, and Rogers describe what they believe to be an
inevitable adaptation of media content to advertising interests
and vise versa. This is a future characterized by AdViruses
(computer viruses that place ads on communication devices),
digimercials, sponsored communication, highly personalized and
directly targeted marketing, and memegraphics.(3) This is a
future where, as Peppers and Rogers optimistically predict,
"...the consumer will be the one in the driver's seat and the
advertiser will be thumbing a ride."(4)

      Doubtlessly seduced by their own enthusiasm, the authors of
the aforementioned articles have failed to consider the social,
political, cultural, and economic implications of their portrait
of the future. In this essay, the author seeks to identify and
briefly discuss a few of the issues that permeate the topic of
broadband advertising. These issues include homogenization of
media content, media concentration and competition, conditions of
access, privacy rights, and the viability of liberal democracy.
This list of issues is neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive,
but it should give the reader a grasp of the complex nature of
the topic and a basis on which to critique the utopian and myopic
visions of communication industry zealots.

 _Media Concentration and Content Homogenization_

      Schrage, Peppers, and Rogers leave the reader with the
impression that advertising in the future will be benevolent by
today's standards, giving the user the opportunity to regain
control over the information she receives and the opportunity to
decrease access costs through sponsored communication. What the
authors fail to mention is the negative impact two related trends
in commercial communication can have on the diversity and quality
of information: unabated and increased concentration of media
through mega-mergers and corporate alliances, and the increased
homogenization of media content.

      Due to the economics of modern communication technologies,
media providers have found it beneficial and often necessary to
form strategic alliances and mergers in order to obtain the
enormous amount of investment capital and technical knowledge
 necessary to compete effectively. On the international level,
governments are rapidly liberalizing and privatizing state-owned
communication monopolies long shielded from global competition.
Nation-states can no longer afford to subsidize uninnovative
PTTs, nor can they afford to loose international competitiveness
while their telecommunication infrastructures decay. In order to
continue to survive and hopefully thrive in an increasingly
competitive global economy, these newly liberalized companies are
forming international alliances in order to gain critical market-
share. There is a frenetically paced race to be among the few
communication firms that will control the majority of the global
market. This trend is undeniable and truly global in scope.

      The concentration of traditional mass-media such as wire
services, newspaper and magazine publishing, book publishing,
radio, network television, and cable television has been
thoroughly documented.(5) What remains to be seen is what effect
the convergence of mass-media and telecommunications will have on
content diversity. If the past is any indication, we are likely
to witness increased commercialization and commodification of
information accompanied by homogenization of content both through
advertising and mass-market pressure.

      Simply put, in order to make a profit on extremely large
financial investments covering mass-markets on a global scale,
communication companies will rely on basically two sources of
income: (a) consumer subscriptions and user fees, and (b)
advertising revenue. Both forms of income require that a private
communication company appeal to the greatest number of people in
each market. Even so-called niche markets need to be of a
critical size before companies find it profitable to provide
specialized services. What this portends is an acceleration, not
an abatement, of the trend toward mindless lowest-common-
denominator programming. People will have the potential to access
thousands of different interactive programs and services, but it
would be a mistake to assume that the content will be diverse.

 _Conditions of Access: Increasing the Knowledge Gap_

      Schrage, Peppers, and Rogers advocate a form of sponsored
communication that would help ensure that almost everybody has
access to the new media. The idea is very seductive, "I'll give
up my privacy and accept certain advertising in exchange for free
service or cash." Such a system, proponents argue, would allow
the economically deprived to enjoy travelling on the information
superhighway with the rest of us without relying on tax increases
and government involvement.

      This argument fails to thoroughly examine exactly what the
consumer will relinquish in return for a few hours of video games
or home shopping. The possibility exists that consumers seduced
by this attractive option will open their minds to sophisticated
and manipulative advertising. Schrage appears to celebrate this
manipulative potential when he writes, "Coca-Cola, Toys R Us,
PepsiCo, and Nabisco may all ultimately design games to imprint
their products onto the neurons of their younger customers."(6)
Schrage goes on to advance the role genetic and memetic
engineering can play in refining the manipulative capability of
advertising.(7) The possibility of advertisements that compel a
predetermined action is frightening for its totalitarian
implications. It is likely that such a system will only widen the
knowledge gap between rich and poor. Furthermore, one of the last
things poor citizens need is increased pressure to consume that
which they would not ordinarily desire or need. If the United
States seeks to improve its economy, rampant consumerism must be
discouraged while investment and savings are encouraged.

 _Privacy Rights: Information and Control_

      Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
states, "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with
his privacy . . . Everyone has the right to the protection of law
against such interference or attacks."(8) Although the United
States has been ambivalent about information privacy protection,
in general advocating a free-flow-of-information doctrine, most
countries have expressed great concern about potentially
pernicious effects of information gathering. In reference to
tensions within the OECD Group on Privacy, Michael Kirby and
Catherine Murray wrote, "The Europeans, with fresh memories of
the misuse of personal data by the secret police of totalitarian
regimes, were perhaps more alert to the practical dangers against
which safeguards were needed."(9) The "...more targeted and
selective" advertisements about which Schrage writes(10) will
require an immense quantity of personal data on the consumers to
whom the ads are directed. It is crucial that the admirable
liberal tradition of freedom of information be balanced by
mechanisms which protect citizens from the abuse of personal
information.

      The Information Infrastructure Task Force (IITF) published
a document on 25 Janary, 1994, that considers issues to be
discussed in the development of the National Information
Infrastructure (NII).(11) "Privacy," the IITF writes, "will be an
important issue in those applications areas involving sensitive
information about individuals or organizations."(12) Although the
IITF identifies only four areas where the privacy issue might
apply (i.e. health care, government services, education, and
library research), the task force leaves open the possibility of
debate on a variety of other areas. It is evident, however, that
protecting citizens' privacy from unwanted intrusion by marketers
is a complicated issue that many government officials would just
as soon avoid. The potential dangers advertising techniques such
as those advanced by Schrage, Peppers, and Rogers command a
thorough discussion of communication policy implications. As
Michael Kirby writes, "The risk derives . . . from the frequent
incapacity of democratic policy processes in international and
national institutions to keep pace with the social implications
of technology."(13)

 _Impact on Liberal Democracy: Toward "Disinformocracy"_

      Given the trends discussed above and the potentially
pernicious effects of increasingly sophisticated and manipulative
advertising, one must necessarily be concerned about the
viability of liberal democracy. Liberal democracy is based on
diversity of information, access to both the means of production
and means of distribution of information (one has the right to
inform as well as be informed), and rational debate. It is
doubtful that any of these characteristics which differentiate
democratic societies from totalitarian states can survive in the
world that Schrage, Peppers, and Rogers describe.

      Howard Rheingold, although in general a Computer Mediated
Communication (CMC) utopian, has expounded upon the potential
dangers CMC poses.(14) Society could easily evolve into a
"society of the spectacle," a hyper-real world in which
communication technologies controlled by trans national
corporations go beyond hiding reality to hiding the absence of
reality itself.(15) According to Schrage, "Advertisements will
feel and play like visual conversations, video games, and
simulations,"(16) and Peppers and Rogers describe advertising
that is ". . . designed to initiate or continue individual
customer dialogues."(17) In other words, advertisements could go
beyond distorting and hiding reality as they often do today to
creating an illusion of participation and reality. As Rheingold
points out, "It's when we forget about the illusion that the
trouble begins."(18)

      Jacques Ellul, a prescient French philosopher, wrote
extensively on the topic of propaganda and technologically
oriented societies. Ellul argues that without mass media and
relatively recent innovations in communication technologies,
propaganda that has the effect of mobilizing entire nations would
not be possible.(19) Furthermore, effective modern propaganda
requires that a society be simultaneously individualistic and
mass oriented. As Ellul writes, "When individuals are not held
together by local structures, the only form in which they can
live together is in an unstructured mass society."(20) The most
effective propagandist must address himself to the individual in
the mass. Each individual must feel personal identification with
the message, but in reality the individual is never ". . .
considered as an individual, but always in terms of what he has
in common with others. . . he is reduced to an average."(21)
Propaganda fills the individual's need for easy explanations of
the world, self-justification, adjustment to a technological
society, and alleviation of loneliness. Finally, propaganda is
most effective when it is ubiquitous and constantly barrages the
individual with signs, symbols, and messages.

      Ellul wrote at a time when the convergence of
telecommunications, computer, and mass-communication technologies
was not a factor. There is nothing inherently democratic or
decentralizing about the emerging communication technologies;
they can be used to either increase the quality and diversity of
 information and make democracy more vigorous in the process or
to slowly erode individual choice and thought while we
unwittingly create the perfect conditions for global tyranny. It
is this author's strong conviction that the world championed by
Schrage, Peppers, and Rogers will lead to the later.

 _Conclusion_

      From the above discourse, it should be clear that
advertising on future broadband networks utilizing advanced
communication and computer technologies has implications too
profound to leave undebated. Homogenization of media content,
media concentration and competition, conditions of access,
privacy rights, and the potential destruction of liberal
democracy are just a few of the important issues that arise when
one considers the complex social, cultural, political, and
economic factors that permeate any discussion of communication
and technological revolution.

      It is important to keep in mind that communication and
information are resources that are indeed different from material
commodities. On the one hand, communication and information do
have economic and political value. At the same time,
communication and information are what make community, society,
culture, and civilization possible; it was not until humans
learned to communicate through symbols and speech that community
and society became a possibility. The future of communication,
therefore, is far too important a matter to leave to private
industry and government. The citizenry must take this opportunity
to reclaim the power to communicate, think for themselves,
receive as well as produce and distribute information, and
rebuild disintegrating communities. If we choose to acquiesce to
more powerful players, we will be the ones hithching a ride on
the information superhighway.


_ENDNOTES_

 1. Michael Schrage, "Is Advertising Finally Dead?" and Don
 Peppers and Martha Rogers, "Let's Make a Deal," both found in
 _Wired_ (February, 1994), pp 71+.

 2. Michael Schrage, pp 73-47.

 3. Memetics is a social science systems-level theory which
 attempts to explain the spread of ideas by comparing the
 phenomenon to the spread of disease. The theory has several
 variations, including a survival-of-the-fittest hypothesis,
which states that only the fittest ideas will survive. Memetics
is a highly controversial area of inquiry for both ethical
reasons and conceptual weaknesses in the related theories.

 4. Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, p 126.

 5. As just one reference see Howard Frederick, _Global
Communication and International Relations_ (Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1993).

 6. Michael Schrage, p 124.

 7. Ibid., p 126.

 8. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 12.

 9. Michael Kirby and Catherine Murray, "Information Security: At
Risk?" in _Global Networks: Computers and International
Communication_, ed. Linda M. Harasim (Massachusetts: MIT Press,
1993), p 170.

 10. Michael Schrage, p 124.

 11. Committee on Applications and Technology, Information
Infrastructure Task Force, "What It Takes to Make It Happen: Key
Issues for Applications of the National Information
 Infrastructure," (25 January, 1994).

 12. Ibid.

 13. Michael Kirby, p 168.

 14. Howard Rheingold, _The Virtual Community: Homesteading on
the Electronic Frontier_, (Addison-Wesley Publishing Company,
1993).

 15. Ibid., p 299.

 16. Michael Schrage, p 124.

 17. Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, p 126.

 18. Howard Rheingold, p 299.

 19. Jacques Ellul, _Propaganda: The Formation of Men's
Attitudes_, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1965).

 20. Jacques Ellul, p 90.

 21. Ellul, p 7.

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