Twitter at the speed of parenting
It was written in 1973, but the author must have had a magic mirror to 45 years in the future, because their characterization of instagram influencers is just so spot on.
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I read a story over the weekend imagining a future where advertising is illegal, and I can’t stop thinking about it - especially in light of our current efforts to understand how companies and countries purchase influence & outcomes.
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The story is this one. There’s A LOT of plot, & a lot of prescient imaginings, including: - fast always-on internet - realtime streams of audience sentiment used to tune content in realtime - scripted “reality” tv I’m still sifting through the layers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_Who_Was_Plugged_In …
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Another interesting layer is that the story was written by a fierce feminist woman, writing as a man for an audience of men.
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In one part she’s explaining why a woman with a traumatic past might not be interested in sex, and I thought, “why on earth would she feel the need to explain something so obv- OH.” Because men don’t know this stuff, and she’s a dude writing for dudes.
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Anyway the big idea that I’ve been dwelling on is that if you outlaw advertising because of its pernicious negative influence on people, it doesn’t disappear - it just gets harder to identify. It gets subtle - the boundaries between content & advertising blur.
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This makes the advertising, or as we’d call it, “paid content,” harder to identify. Which can lead to even more negative pernicious effects vs. when it’s out in the open.
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The more I think about how to counteract the negative effects of advertising-driven services like facebook, the more I think the tech industry a) won’t self-regulate and b) won’t (and shouldn’t) be driving the eventual solution.
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We had our shot & we fucked it up. Thanks, Zuck. You ruined it for everyone. Time to get some adults in here who understand policy and actually consider the repercussions of various approaches.
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End of conversation
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I read your blog post http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/2013/11/11/why-you-should-never-use-mongodb/ … … and I was really influenced by its content, then I realized it was written in 2013 and I wanted to know if you still believe that its contents are still relevant today?
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was it a good story? the setting sounds awesome!
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It would be nice. It feels every day that we are closer to the world of Jennifer Government, where companies are in charge and the government is pretty powerless.
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After reading that first sentence I thought that you would be talking about "The Space Merchants" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Merchants …) or its sequel. Sounds like the book you meant is more subtle, should be an interesting read.
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I am imagining reading this on kindle and found it amusing that there might be ads displayed while reading about ads being outlawed. Thanks for the book info.
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Thanks. Fascinatng.
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Thank you for the recommendation, and your commentary! It blows my mind to find this level of prescience in a 45-year-old story.
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