Something about formulating what we say so that it can be read by robots seems...wrong...doesn't it?
It seems to me that as content becomes increasingly more relegated to the domain of the digital, the question of how we prepare ourselves for a world in which the information we consume has been developed not for our eyes, but for those of the google spider, merits consideration. In class, we discussed the difference in titles from the New York Times print and online editions for the same article-- the online edition being optimized for search engine readability--that is, stripped of puns, irony, in short, boring, dumbed-down and direct, designed to communicate to google the relevance of the material to Search. As advertizing dollars become more and more a part of the Search-game, companies and individuals find themselves in a race to optimize, but what do we lose? What happens when the print edition of the Times dies? Will Irony die too? Perhaps more worrisome, will information become differentiated between consumers? In the short term, will print readers and online readers read the news differently? What about the customization of search results. In 20 years, will you and I get completely different results? If I make under a certain amount of money, will I ever even see an ad for a Mercedes? Will this make the effects of inequality more serious or perhaps less? But will I, being stuck in a world that's been created for me by my demography and tastes, be able to change, to grow, to imagine what it would be like to have a different life?
2 comments:
I agree that as content becomes more targeted, there will be a certain amount of differentiation between the advertisements we experience. I am not so sure this is a worrisome trend.Today, everyone is bombarded with advertisements. And, to a large extent this is because advertisements cannot discriminate. I would prefer to be able to opt-in to a preferable selection of advertisements rather than experience everything. I am not sure this ought to occur based on money either. You want young people who don't have much money to grow up idealizing cars like Mercedes. Regardless, this is a really interesting blog.
Monique, your comments struck a chord with me too. Oddly, the scene that popped into my head was one from Pixar's Wall-E, wherein the population of humans on the Axiom ship constantly watch TV and see advertisements all day long.
The people are all identically dressed in the same red "jumpsuit" outfits, and an advertisement announces that "blue is the new red". Immediately the people all push a button and change their jumpsuits to blue (in the futuristic imagination where these things can be controlled by a push of the button).
Even though it's a movie with extreme social commentary interwoven into the plot, I fully believe that consumers buy what is presented to them. If I am not aware of a product, I will not think to buy it unless I have a direct referral from someone.
In advertising, there is a concept of the "evoked set", an example of which is the cola wars. When someone mentions "soda", a vast majority of the population will think of Coke and Pepsi. That's it. Not Sprite, not Mountain Dew, and not A&W root beer. Just Coke and Pepsi. They are the evoked set for "soda". The evoked set typically has 3 or fewer brands, so companies spend significant amounts of money trying to work their way into the evoked set, particularly for high-volume consumer products.
We all know that "targeted" advertising is using demographic information, as well as individual preferences, and will show the brands and products with the highest likelihood of click-throughs and purchase. I personally don't think this is anything to worry about, since magazine publishers have been tracking people through their lives for a century (what 28-year-old female did NOT get an ulcer after her free "Cosmopolitan" magainzes turned into "Home & Garden" or even worse, "Healthy Parenting"?
Instead, this just means that consumers should use all the wonderful tools of search to look for options and research prior to purchase. After all, these days there is a wealth of information only a click away, and that click doesn't have to happen in the paid listings window on Google...
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