a few months ago i was on acid and i had the following epiphany
i saw the internet browser screen as a fountain of water, with two distinct streams. the first is the content, which flows down in the middle of the screen. the second is the advertising, which flows all along the edges according to the efforts of designers, advertising salesmen, and executives.
i have been thinking a lot lately about how crucial advertising is to a free internet and how i really want to embrace the fact that the advertising is what drives the content and makes it possible by fishing for the funds that pay for the server space. just as the content brings the readers that makes this fishing possible.
so anyway my vision of this symbiotic animal was of the rippling waves of advertising are constantly above and to either side of the content you are trying to look at, and as you scroll down the page the ads flash and change according to their own perverse logic. sometimes the ads even swell and splash to cover the content, but only for an amount of time just short enough so that you don't quit the page in disgust.
as long as we can get used to this frothing border we should be able to have just about anything be free and still profitable from the internet, from videos to books to music, computer programs, various administrative, organizational, and informative services.
in the eyes of the young, the two streams (content and advertising) are immediately distinct, but to those not raised to the new medium they seem hopelessly entangled.
google is trying to trick our young eyes by making the ads look almost as austire as the content, because the overt graphical aggressiveness of most ads is their deadist giveaway.
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2 comments:
I feel this way about life, generally. There are some select people worth meeting, some select experiences worth having, and all the rest is peripheral yammering static.
i actually mentioned this in an interview with google like 2 months ago...they asked me, "what do you see as the future of the industry?" the guy really didn't know what to say... finally he was like, "well... thats interesting... i've certainly never heard anything like that before!" i didn't get the job, fuck those smug bastards.
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