Journal Skevin's Journal: AOL: Suggestions to make the Internet better
It seems there's a slew of AOL ads showing their users making suggestions to "help make the Internet better".
I marvel at the underhanded subtlety of this ad campaign. It slowly puts an idea into the public mind that AOL is the Internet. Are they even a member of the W3C?
We geeks generally overlook such commercials, but alas, we geeks do not constitute the majority. The majority of people out there will generally believe everything said to them from a Trustworthy (read: lots of money) source. These are the kinds of people who believe that Windows has a lower TCO over Linux because MS can pay numerous "neutral" companies to construct pretty bar graphs that say so. These are the kinds of people that make our decisions for us.
Now, here's a good kick in the pants: Reality is determined by Collective Belief in Reality. This probably doesn't come as a surprise you epistemologists out there, but for the rest of us, it takes a few moments to digest exactly how profound this epiphany is. A company's stock performs well because there resides enough collective faith in the public mind that it will perform well. Women find you (un)attractive only because they believe other women see you as (un)attractive. Dragons used to be live in great numbers at the edge of the world... that last statement can considered true from a nuministic standpoint: just because no one has seen one does not mean it does not exist. If the greater public believed that dragons existed, then by all means they must have existed.
If AOL does achieve some medium of success in this endeavor, and happens to survive the myriad Truth In Advertising laws that abound in other countries, then I vow to letters to:
I marvel at the underhanded subtlety of this ad campaign. It slowly puts an idea into the public mind that AOL is the Internet. Are they even a member of the W3C?
We geeks generally overlook such commercials, but alas, we geeks do not constitute the majority. The majority of people out there will generally believe everything said to them from a Trustworthy (read: lots of money) source. These are the kinds of people who believe that Windows has a lower TCO over Linux because MS can pay numerous "neutral" companies to construct pretty bar graphs that say so. These are the kinds of people that make our decisions for us.
Now, here's a good kick in the pants: Reality is determined by Collective Belief in Reality. This probably doesn't come as a surprise you epistemologists out there, but for the rest of us, it takes a few moments to digest exactly how profound this epiphany is. A company's stock performs well because there resides enough collective faith in the public mind that it will perform well. Women find you (un)attractive only because they believe other women see you as (un)attractive. Dragons used to be live in great numbers at the edge of the world... that last statement can considered true from a nuministic standpoint: just because no one has seen one does not mean it does not exist. If the greater public believed that dragons existed, then by all means they must have existed.
If AOL does achieve some medium of success in this endeavor, and happens to survive the myriad Truth In Advertising laws that abound in other countries, then I vow to letters to:
- the Los Angeles DWP, with suggestions to make electricity better.
- the Phone Company, with suggestions to make phone sex better.
- NASA and JPL, with suggestions to make space better.
- various airlines, with suggestions to make aerodynamics better.
When that day comes, I will gladly help the Clueless to blur the distinction between Providers and Services.
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AOL: Suggestions to make the Internet better
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