Look at the billboard and say cheese

  • What do you think of the idea of having billboards that have face recognition software? The technology is emerging and the debate is beginning. (more HERE)

    And so we see that Steven Spielberg has a prophetic soul. For this scene of “Minority Report” all you need to know is that Tom Cruise’s character is named John Anderton. Pay attention to the retina-scanning interactive commercials at the mall he’s in …

    I saw this movie back in 2002, and this scene stuck with me, because it seemed so completely plausible.

    I tend to have a dark outlook about our futures as American consumers these days, because we come from a very rich country that seems poised on the edge of a long slough period economically. And so, things that used to sound bright and futuristic, like “permission marketing”, are a little less exciting and a little more disturbing. And online sellers are already beginning to treat me less like a customer and more like a problem child. If I don’t Like them on Facebook, if I don’t click the box to receive valuable email updates, if I don’t hit the Allow button that lets them access my email address book, they make things a little difficult for me. Suddenly, I can’t quite get what I want and I am put onto screens that keep repeating what THEY want, decorated with a smokescreen of obsequious, superficial expressions of customer service. Sometimes I find out weeks later that they installed a program or put me on an email list or gave my contact information to a third party. In other words, they blew on past the troublesome aspect of permission. All I wanted from them was a transaction, and they used the occasion for a power grab.

    I begin to feel like the country’s retailers are an organism from a creepy 50′s movie — something that outgrew its Petri dish and is a little scary in what it will do to stay alive.


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    July 27th, 2012 | Grace | 1 Comment | Tags: , ,

One Response and Counting...

  • s-p 07.27.2012

    As someone said a couple months ago at a seminar I went to: you are not the customer, you are the product. Nothing is "free". By using FB, Google etc. you have sold yourself to them as the product they sell to advertisers. Most of us understand that backwards.

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