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Part of something I posted in 2000 to Doug Engelbart's "Unifinshed Revolution II" colloquium touching on corporations as "AIs":
http://www.dougengelbart.org/c...

========= machine intelligence is already here =========
I personally think machine evolution is unstoppable, and the best hope for humanity is the noble cowardice of creating refugia and trying, like the duckweed, to create human (and other) life faster than other forces can destroy it.

Note, I'm not saying machine evolution won't have a human component -- in that sense, a corporation or any bureaucracy is already a separate machine intelligence, just not a very smart or resilient one. This sense of the corporation comes out of Langdon Winner's book "Autonomous Technology: Technics out of control as a theme in political thought".
http://www.rpi.edu/~winner/

You may have a tough time believing this, but Winner makes a convincing case. He suggests that all successful organizations "reverse-adapt" their goals and their environment to ensure their continued survival. These corporate machine intelligences are already driving for better machine intelligences -- faster, more efficient, cheaper, and more resilient. People forget that corporate charters used to be routinely revoked for behavior outside the immediate public good, and that corporations were not considered persons until around 1886 (that decision perhaps being the first major example of a machine using the political/social process of its own ends).
http://www.adbusters.org/magaz...

Corporate charters are granted supposedly because society believe it is in the best interest of *society* for corporations to exist. But, when was the last time people were able to pull the "charter" plug on a corporation not acting in the public interest? It's hard, and it will get harder when corporations don't need people to run themselves.
http://www.adbusters.org/magaz...
http://www.adbusters.org/campa...

I'm not saying the people in corporations are evil -- just that they often have very limited choices of actions. If a corporate CEOs do not deliver short term profits they are removed, no matter what they were trying to do. Obviously there are exceptions for a while -- William C. Norris of Control Data was one of them, but in general, the exception proves the rule. Fortunately though, even in the worst machines (like in WWII Germany) there were individuals who did what they could to make them more humane ("Schindler's List" being an example).

Look at how much William C. Norris http://www.neii.com/wnorris.ht... of Control Data got ridiculed in the 1970s for suggesting the then radical notion that "business exists to meet society's unmet needs". Yet his pioneering efforts in education, employee assistance plans, on-site daycare, urban renewal, and socially-responsible investing are in part what made Minneapolis/St.Paul the great area it is today. Such efforts are now being duplicated to an extent by other companies. Even the company that squashed CDC in the mid 1980s (IBM) has adopted some of those policies and directions. So corporations can adapt when they feel the need.

Obviously, corporations are not all powerful. The world still has some individuals who have wealth to equal major corporations. There are several governments that are as powerful or more so than major corporations. Individuals in corporations can make persuasive pitches about their future directions, and individuals with controlling shares may be able to influence what a corporation does (as far as the market allows). In the long run, many corporations are trying to coexist w

Part of something I posted in 2000 to Doug Engelbart's "Unifinshed Revolution II" colloquium touching on corporations as "AIs":
http://www.dougengelbart.org/c...

========= machine intelligence is already here =========
I personally think machine evolution is unstoppable, and the best hope for humanity is the noble cowardice of creating refugia and trying, like the duckweed, to create human (and other) life faster than other forces can destroy it.

Note, I'm not saying machine evolution won't have a human component -- in that sense, a corporation or any bureaucracy is already a separate machine intelligence, just not a very smart or resilient one. This sense of the corporation comes out of Langdon Winner's book "Autonomous Technology: Technics out of control as a theme in political thought".
http://www.rpi.edu/~winner/

You may have a tough time believing this, but Winner makes a convincing case. He suggests that all successful organizations "reverse-adapt" their goals and their environment to ensure their continued survival. These corporate machine intelligences are already driving for better machine intelligences -- faster, more efficient, cheaper, and more resilient. People forget that corporate charters used to be routinely revoked for behavior outside the immediate public good, and that corporations were not considered persons until around 1886 (that decision perhaps being the first major example of a machine using the political/social process of its own ends).
http://www.adbusters.org/magaz...

Corporate charters are granted supposedly because society believe it is in the best interest of *society* for corporations to exist. But, when was the last time people were able to pull the "charter" plug on a corporation not acting in the public interest? It's hard, and it will get harder when corporations don't need people to run themselves.
http://www.adbusters.org/magaz...
http://www.adbusters.org/campa...

I'm not saying the people in corporations are evil -- just that they often have very limited choices of actions. If a corporate CEOs do not deliver short term profits they are removed, no matter what they were trying to do. Obviously there are exceptions for a while -- William C. Norris of Control Data was one of them, but in general, the exception proves the rule. Fortunately though, even in the worst machines (like in WWII Germany) there were individuals who did what they could to make them more humane ("Schindler's List" being an example).

Look at how much William C. Norris http://www.neii.com/wnorris.ht... of Control Data got ridiculed in the 1970s for suggesting the then radical notion that "business exists to meet society's unmet needs". Yet his pioneering efforts in education, employee assistance plans, on-site daycare, urban renewal, and socially-responsible investing are in part what made Minneapolis/St.Paul the great area it is today. Such efforts are now being duplicated to an extent by other companies. Even the company that squashed CDC in the mid 1980s (IBM) has adopted some of those policies and directions. So corporations can adapt when they feel the need.

Obviously, corporations are not all powerful. The world still has some individuals who have wealth to equal major corporations. There are several governments that are as powerful or more so than major corporations. Individuals in corporations can make persuasive pitches about their future directions, and individuals with controlling shares may be able to influence what a corporation does (as far as the market allows). In the long run, many corporations are trying to coexist w

Part of something I posted in 2000 to Doug Engelbart's "Unifinshed Revolution II" colloquium touching on corporations as "AIs":
http://www.dougengelbart.org/c...

========= machine intelligence is already here =========
I personally think machine evolution is unstoppable, and the best hope for humanity is the noble cowardice of creating refugia and trying, like the duckweed, to create human (and other) life faster than other forces can destroy it.

Note, I'm not saying machine evolution won't have a human component -- in that sense, a corporation or any bureaucracy is already a separate machine intelligence, just not a very smart or resilient one. This sense of the corporation comes out of Langdon Winner's book "Autonomous Technology: Technics out of control as a theme in political thought".
http://www.rpi.edu/~winner/

You may have a tough time believing this, but Winner makes a convincing case. He suggests that all successful organizations "reverse-adapt" their goals and their environment to ensure their continued survival. These corporate machine intelligences are already driving for better machine intelligences -- faster, more efficient, cheaper, and more resilient. People forget that corporate charters used to be routinely revoked for behavior outside the immediate public good, and that corporations were not considered persons until around 1886 (that decision perhaps being the first major example of a machine using the political/social process of its own ends).
http://www.adbusters.org/magaz...

Corporate charters are granted supposedly because society believe it is in the best interest of *society* for corporations to exist. But, when was the last time people were able to pull the "charter" plug on a corporation not acting in the public interest? It's hard, and it will get harder when corporations don't need people to run themselves.
http://www.adbusters.org/magaz...
http://www.adbusters.org/campa...

I'm not saying the people in corporations are evil -- just that they often have very limited choices of actions. If a corporate CEOs do not deliver short term profits they are removed, no matter what they were trying to do. Obviously there are exceptions for a while -- William C. Norris of Control Data was one of them, but in general, the exception proves the rule. Fortunately though, even in the worst machines (like in WWII Germany) there were individuals who did what they could to make them more humane ("Schindler's List" being an example).

Look at how much William C. Norris http://www.neii.com/wnorris.ht... of Control Data got ridiculed in the 1970s for suggesting the then radical notion that "business exists to meet society's unmet needs". Yet his pioneering efforts in education, employee assistance plans, on-site daycare, urban renewal, and socially-responsible investing are in part what made Minneapolis/St.Paul the great area it is today. Such efforts are now being duplicated to an extent by other companies. Even the company that squashed CDC in the mid 1980s (IBM) has adopted some of those policies and directions. So corporations can adapt when they feel the need.

Obviously, corporations are not all powerful. The world still has some individuals who have wealth to equal major corporations. There are several governments that are as powerful or more so than major corporations. Individuals in corporations can make persuasive pitches about their future directions, and individuals with controlling shares may be able to influence what a corporation does (as far as the market allows). In the long run, many corporations are trying to coexist w

I remember those "1984" commercials. I would never want Apple to become a massive corporate bandit, especially one that sells to the dead end of Western Civilization.

Talk to your government and convince them to follow the example of Sao Paulo. They did what every city should do: Ban outdoor advertisement.

https://www.adbusters.org/maga...

Wow, she was also an aunt of my father! Small world! :-) I think we might have commented on slashdot on that coincidence a few years back? But you'd have to be pretty old if she was your aunt, as opposed to, like me, a great aunt? I met her once with my father when she was still in her own home, and maybe incidentally another time or two perhaps (decades ago).

Glad that "open sourcing" runs in the family. :-) Although I might feel differently about open sourcing my body or DNA than open sourcing some software I've written. :-) Still, it is kind of a mental calculation of the risk that personal DNA sequences could be used against one or one's family somehow versus the benefits of medical breakthroughs for your own family and also everyone, and also that DNA is not that hard to get via copies of medical samples or from trash or whatever...

I've put some links in other replies to ideas about health sensemaking to help everyone live longer and healthier lives.
https://www.newschallenge.org/...

And while I was born and raised in the USA, maybe it shows some Dutch roots that I believe we can make more "land" for a growing population by reclaiming it from "space" in addition to the sea. Of course, with falling birth rated in industrialized countries, long term population growth does not seem to be one of our problems/blessings, even if many people start living a lot longer.
http://p2pfoundation.net/backu...

Health may be also be partially a function of what you do relative to your genes and environment, so her preferences, say, for orange juice and herring might have worked better for herself than for others in different situations. For health commonalities, one can read about "Blue Zones" and also I like Dr. Joel Fuhrman's work overall emphasizing eating more vegetables (but quibble about some parts).
http://www.bluezones.com/
http://www.drfuhrman.com/libra...

Attitude and "morale" is also a surprisingly big part, for many reasons including because it affects your connectedness to your community from which other good things flow. Probably easier to have higher morale in the Netherlands than in a much crazier place like the USA though. :-)

Contrast:
http://www.findingdutchland.co...
"According to Unicef's most recent Child Well Being in Rich Countries survey, Dutch kids ranked as the happiest kids in the world. Dutch kids led the way in three out of the five categories, namely- material well being, educational well being, and behavior and risks."

With:
https://www.adbusters.org/maga...
""The reason our children's lives [in the UK] are the worst among economically advanced countries is because we are a poor version of the USA," he said. "So the USA comes second from bottom and we follow behind. The age of neo-liberalism, even with the human face that New Labour has given it, cannot stem the tide of the social recession capitalism creates.""

Anyway, we're all not going to live that long unless we sort out some of the wealth inequality and distribution issues given the spread of AI, robotics, and other automation that makes most human labor less and less valuable economically. The following may sound silly in the Netherlands or other parts of Western Europe, but it sound all too plausible in the USA given current politics:
http://marshallbrain.com/manna...
"But that's stupid." I said, "What possible justification is there for a whole population of people to be living on welfare or t

http://www.corporatecrimerepor...

Fines or imprisoning CEOs do little to change the pattern of relationships and values and policies that make an organization what it is, any more than a human body loosing some skill cells or even brain cells usually changes how a person behaves very much.

Seriously, why should any corporate communications have any expectation of privacy? Corporations with "limited liability" are chartered for the public interest. 150 years ago, US Americans put such creatures on very short leashes because they had seen what trouble resulted from big British corporations in the American colonies. Individuals have now lost pretty much all informational privacy due to large corporations and the current internet. Why should bigger more powerful creatures than humans like corporation have more privacy in practice than humans? See also David Brin's "The Transparent Society". Any argument that corporations need privacy (like for salaries or payments for services) for some sort of commercial advantage is trumped by the public interest in understanding what corporations are doing and also that if all corporations were transparent there would be a level playing field. Granted, it would require new ways of doing business, but books like "Honest Business" also extol the value of "open books". Or perhaps corporations should be forced to choose -- if they want limited liability for shareholders then they need to be transparent; if every shareholder accepts full responsibility for all actions of the organization, then they can have privacy?

And see also my comments from 2000, the relevant section copied below (sadly a lot of links there have rotted):
http://www.dougengelbart.org/c...

========= machine intelligence is already here =========

I personally think machine evolution is unstoppable, and the best hope
for humanity is the noble cowardice of creating refugia and trying, like
the duckweed, to create human (and other) life faster than other forces
can destroy it. [Well, I now in 2014 think there are also other options, like symbiosis, maybe friendly AI, and in general trying to be nicer to each other like with a basic income in hopes that leads to a happier singularity...]

Note, I'm not saying machine evolution won't have a human component --
in that sense, a corporation or any bureaucracy is already a separate
machine intelligence, just not a very smart or resilient one. This sense
of the corporation comes out of Langdon Winner's book "Autonomous
Technology: Technics out of control as a theme in political thought".
http://www.rpi.edu/~winner/
You may have a tough time believing this, but Winner makes a convincing
case. He suggests that all successful organizations "reverse-adapt"
their goals and their environment to ensure their continued survival.

These corporate machine intelligences are already driving for better
machine intelligences -- faster, more efficient, cheaper, and more
resilient. People forget that corporate charters used to be routinely
revoked for behavior outside the immediate public good, and that
corporations were not considered persons until around 1886 (that
decision perhaps being the first major example of a machine using the
political/social process of its own ends).
http://www.adbusters.org/magaz...
Corporate charters are granted supposedly because society believe it is
in the best interest of *society* for corporations to exist.

But, when was the last time people were able to pull the "charter" plug
on a corporation not acting in the public interest? It's hard, and it
will get harder when corporations don't ne

I like the approach AdBusters takes. It's not going to tear down any walls by itself, but it does a nice job of presenting an option.

Their new "#mindbombs" campaign to put anti-consumerist commercials on television is interesting. No idea what effect it will have, if any, but it's still a good idea to let people know it's possible to be cool without buying into consumerist culture.

https://www.adbusters.org/blog...

https://www.adbusters.org/maga...

People want better ads? No. People do not want ads, But if they are forced to chooses between two evils, they will chooses the less evil one.
In this case that is better ads.
Sure, sometimes the ads are better then the content (Superbowl anybody?) but that does not mean I want to watch ads all the time.
Soa Paulo in Brazil does not have any ads anymore.
I would be happy if all cities in the world would follow their example.

Banksy has a nice idea about it:
People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you're not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.

You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.

Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It's yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.

You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don't owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs.

Wow! Using your income as a tool for protest. You're so fucking cool! As if anyone gives a shit what you buy with your meager salary.

Enjoy some good reading here: Adbusters, and then think about how you can throw off the yoke for yourself.

leftists? really?

Yes, really. Most leftist organizations and peace [sic] groups outside Israel are pretty much uniformly against Israel.

There's a difference between saying, for instance, that the Gaza settlements are illegal/unjustified and saying that therefore every Palestinian action is a justified response. In other words, there's a difference between being against the policies (official or otherwise) of the Israeli government (and thereby sympathizing with the people who are wronged by those policies) and being PRO-Palestinian reactions to those policies. The earlier comment had said that "leftists" take "the Palestinian side," which is massively oversimplified and sloppy at best. The GratefulNet has a point in that, at least, "leftists" are often smeared as being antisemitic simply for disagreeing with some Israeli politics, when in fact those very same "leftists" are the first to praise Israel for, e.g., its gay and gender equality -- where in many ways, btw, it's ahead of the US, let alone other Middle Eastern countries.

And self-styled anarchists like the bozos behind AdBusters are very anti-Israel.

Anarchists are right-wing, not left-wing.

I wish that were the case, but many leftist groups rally in support of Hamas and even Hezbollah, despite the enormous cognitive dissonance that should cause. I'd post links, but all you need to do is a Google search or searches on the sites I mentioned above.

Saying that "many leftist groups" support Hamas is a bit like saying that "many right-wing groups" supporting murdering doctors who provide reproductive services. It's true for some values of "many," but it's not a remotely helpful comment to make.

leftists? really?

Yes, really. Most leftist organizations and peace [sic] groups outside Israel are pretty much uniformly against Israel. You may be leftist and not against Israel, but that's going against the official positions of most leftist groups. Just look at the official stances of rabble.ca, cupe.ca, the "BDS" movement, etc.

And self-styled anarchists like the bozos behind AdBusters are very anti-Israel.

no leftists are in favor of the combined arab aggression that wishes israel off the map (more accurately, all jews dead).

I wish that were the case, but many leftist groups rally in support of Hamas and even Hezbollah, despite the enormous cognitive dissonance that should cause. I'd post links, but all you need to do is a Google search or searches on the sites I mentioned above.

Yup. People often forget that Apple is not a software or hardware company but a marketing company. One of the most successful marketing companies in the history of marketing in fact. They are so good, the people at Adbusters strut around proudly displaying their products unironically. If Apple wanted, they could literally sell freezers to eskimos.

"I miss the days of over-engineered machines built of inferior materials." ... "Funny thing is, they still work. Like new."

Sadly thank the Gillette razor manufacturer for creating the tread with their idea of the disposable blades, just over a hundred years ago. Since then ever more products have been designed to wear out and fail. Its the whole concept of planned obsolescence which is a big marketing tactic. (So much for conserving and using earth resources responsibly. These companies are far more (self-)interested in profit). Its disturbing how much thought goes into planned obsolescence, e.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

Here's an eye opening discussion about the idea of "Ending the Depression Through Planned Obsolescence" back in 1932.
https://www.adbusters.org/blogs/blackspot_blog/consumer_society_made_break.html

Its a tactical move by companies. No wonder we have such problems now with everyone consuming earth's resources after decades of companies behaving like this.

But I don't know how it'll ever be stopped. For decades everyone has been led to believe in the idea of getting things ever cheaper, but that quietly assumes the product will fail sooner and so need replacing sooner and so in the long run, it'll end up working out more expensive. But then everyone has been also led to believe almost everything is out of fashion and so needs to be replaced regularly. While thats true of some things (especially technology due to improvements) it doesn't apply to everything we buy.

Another problem is it costs more to produce something well rather than cheaply. So the cheap companies win and the well produced product companies end up going out of business. So we are rushing towards a world that produces ever more cheap rubbish that keeps needing to be thrown away and each time its thrown away someone profits from replacing what was thrown away. So we have ever growing rubbish mountains all around the world, which is also causing ever more environmental damage. :(

Phones are social objects; they live and die on cultural perception, on our collective assessment of what carrying them can do for our style.

or so the article tells me. Huh? My main phone (a Casio, for Japan) lives and dies on its battery. It's reliable and legible and the payment plan makes it cheaper than most of the alternatives. It's about three years old, making it half the age of my other phone (Sony Eriksson, for Britain). So I'm happy with it, though you're welcome to enjoy your own, very different phone.

Pace Farhad Manjoo but I really couldn't give a bowel movement about my "style" (if any) and unless you're an available and unusually alluring specimen of the opposite sex I don't care what you think of it either.

Consider using your old phone and doing less to accelerate the degradation of the planet.

But really the whole mission statement of Adbusters is stupid. Removing all ads from the internet will destroy pretty much every service on the internet. Think youtube would be profitable without ads? How about any site you visit with alot of images. Bandwidth isn't free so sites make money from either ads, donations or memberships. Most sites with memberships remove the ads for you so this goal is STUPID. Just use Adblock if you hate them so much

...but here's the actual mission statement:

"We are a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age. Our aim is to topple existing power structures and forge a major shift in the way we will live in the 21st century. To this end, Adbusters Media Foundation publishes Adbusters magazine, operates this website and offers its creative services through PowerShift, our advocacy advertising agency."

- http://www.adbusters.org/about/adbusters

I personally am still weighing the pros and cons of the clickfraud approach, but the comment that your post is FUD is spot-on.

The better way to stick it to Google Ads is to just do a massive ad blackout. Companies could just shut their campaign down for a few days. That would prevent G from obtaining any revenue and companies from getting those zillions of extra clicks.
I think Ad Busters could come up with a better campaign.

perhaps you would be more interested in buy nothing day

I agree absolutely, punch us in the face. I'm a student in a digital arts program; digital arts is a nice way of saying graphic design, which is a nice way of saying advertising. I've opted to shun the marketting end of it and just absorb the photoshop knowledge from here on. The outlook for your mental health is pretty bleak, and its expecially obvious if you have an education in it. If you are especially pissed off about advertising, a site you may like is adbusters.org

And that study also says it decreases with urbanization. Perhaps "nature deficit disorder"?
    http://dir.salon.com/story/mwt/feature/2005/06/02/ Louv/index.html

In any case it's not a study looking between cultures, but across one specific culture. And global studies of happiness show many "poorer" countries overall reporting greater happiness.

    "Nigeria tops happiness survey"
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3157570.st m
"Nigeria has the highest percentage of happy people followed by Mexico, Venezuela, El Salvador and Puerto Rico, while Russia, Armenia and Romania have the fewest. But factors that make people happy may vary from one country to the next with personal success and self-expression being seen as the most important in the US, while in Japan, fulfilling the expectations of family and society is valued more highly. "

    "Generation F*cked: How Britain is Eating Its Young"
    http://www.adbusters.org/the_magazine/71/Generatio n_Fcked_How_Britain_is_Eating_Its_Young.html
"The reason our children's lives are the worst among economically advanced countries is because we are a poor version of the USA," he said. "So the USA comes second from bottom and we follow behind. The age of neo-liberalism, even with the human face that New Labour has given it, cannot stem the tide of the social recession capitalism creates."

Case in point: Nike tried for years to get into the skateboard shoe industry... an industry which has been dominated by smaller companies since its inception.

At first, they failed miserably. But with each attempt, they learned a little bit more about how the subculture worked.

Now they probably sell more "skateboarding shoes" than any other company.

Of course, all they've done is buy the mind-share of young people through some adept marketing... but is there any difference between that and "buying cool?"

The fact that it's difficult to find a economically viable renewable energy solutions shows that it's our economic system that's not viable.

So long as economist don't know how to subtract, and as long as polluters get to externalize their costs, economic reality and physical reality will not correspond.

...but "Troll" does not mean "anything with which I disagree."

I sincerely believe what I posted above. If you want to have a reasoned debate about it, I'm game. But modding me down just makes you out to be the ignorant child you are.

Now, let me address something ShadowsHawk said in response to my comment.

People join the military for all sorts of reasons, but I doubt "helping to build the American hegemony" is one of them.

That's right. People join the military to get job training, or to get money for college, or because they've been brainwashed into a military tradition by their family, or lastly and leastly, so they can serve their country. But what all of these people have in common is that, wittingly or not, they are doing just that.

Now, I would argue that any responsible adult should be able to consider the repercussions of their actions, and one of the things that results from joining the military is that it grows. I know this sounds like a very sophomoric point to actually address, but since some people (including your esteemed self) don't seem to be getting this point, I'm going to belabor it until the dead horse has been well-whipped. I can think of no other way to get the point across. When the military is larger, it is easier to apply it to various situations in which it is not warranted. For instance, http://adbusters.org/media/flash/hope_and_memory/t imeline.swf is one of my favorite little presentations on American military history. If you just glance through it you will see that the majority of American military actions were questionable to say the least. We forced Japan to trade with us by force, and of course we all know that we invaded Mexico repeatedly, and stole large portions of what is now the Estados Unidos Norteamericanos away from them, forcing them at gunpoint to sell the rest for a song. We were involved in the Opium wars. We annexed Hawaii in 1898. Especially check out Honduras in 1905; this is one of many American military conquests specifically supporting the United Fruit Company. Look carefully at Nicaragua in 1910, Cuba in 1917, Guatemala in 1954, Haiti in 1959...

The list goes on and on but what all of these things have in common is that they were financially motivated. They weren't about helping people. They were about money and power. Yes, in the same list there are conflicts that are about protecting people from bad people. There's attacks on pirates (the real kind) and their institutions. There's WWI and WWII.

Today, we are seeing much the same thing. We have bombed the shit out of a middle eastern company yet again. And yet again, the bulk of the rebuilding will be carried out by American contractors. In fact, the sole contractor overseeing and profiting from the entire thing is, guess who, Halliburton. The government claimed that they were the only contractor that could be ready "in time" and so they got the contract. Gee, I wonder why they were the only ones to meet the lengthy, detailed, and frankly unnecessary requirements so suddenly. Could they have had, you know, advance warning? Given the connection between certain high-ranking officials in our government and Halliburton, not only is that highly likely, but it is a virtual certainty.

Are you getting the message yet? There are times when the American military has done good things. Most of these were minor conflicts. A couple of them were major. In the case of the minor conflicts, a large standing military was not necessary. In the case of the major ones, the draft was utilized to bring up the numbers of people sent off to combat the menace. In neither case is a large standing military requir

On the other hand, if you also calculate my ecological footprint, if everyone lived like me, we'd need four planets to support us all. Good thing everyone doesn't live like me. It's good to be on top.

This is a great country. We have so much peace and prosperity, buying less than other people do is considered a "counterculture" movement.

That would be nice, but if the experience of Adbusters is anything to go by, you won't be able to buy the spot. Why? Because TV/cable channels are worried about alienating their major customers (that's not you and me, that's the big corporations that are pushing for DRM and their affiliates and partners that buy the majority of advertising air time) and are anyway owned by some of the major forces pushing for DRM.

The Virus (a.k.a. Television) continues to spread its SICKNESS (a.k.a. mindless, passive, apathic consumerism). Fortunately, there are "doctors" working for a cure.

SAS Shoes -- Buy Local, or Buy Nothing at all.

I concur. I mean, if Google is such a threat, why isn't one of the twenty-five corporations that Adbusters is cracking down on?

This is just big business creating a fear of Google because it promotes free products and services as well as supporting a business model for relevant products. When I come here to /. I prefer to see Google Adwords show me things like "250MB of free web space" or "I hate Jack Thompson T-shirts at ThinkGeek", none of this "FR33 C|A1|5" leet speek that causes click fraud that these other companies have been using to make Google look like the next Microsoft.

Google is not Microsoft!

The guys at google are trying very hard not to be the next Microsoft but when you have bogus news stories published by capitalist yellow journalism publications (BusinessWeek, Fortune, Forbes, Money, etc.) it's hard to fight off these people who pose as the culture jammers when the real culture jammers have no problem with Google yet.

I totally agree that this is corporate disinformation!

If I read you correctly you are stating that America is better described as classist than racist, and I'd completely agree with that assessment. Generally speaking the only color that matters is green.

I'd also agree that some cultures "suck more than others". Mainstream American culture, regrettably, being one of them. There is no national American culture, just pop culture - an all encompassing consumerism celebrating gluttony, violence and a five-minute attention span. A McDonalds on every corner! The latest Hollywood blockbuster! Wal-Mart! NASCAR! Guns! Antiquated public education! Preferential healthcare! Is this the best someone can aspire to?

When you throw away something genuine in favor of what the mainstream has to offer, it isn't a fair trade... and having done so, to assume you are at the top of the heap is exactly the delusion those who profit from your apathy are feeding you. The so-called American Dream is the whole world's nightmare.

I realize the ads subsidize my subscription, but I do try to avoid them. Adbusters magazine has no real ads (just spoof ads), and consequently costs much more than BLENDER magazine, which is roughly 25-50% ads. What really ticks me off is the movie ads, because you're a captive audience, can't press a mute button, and can't easily turn away from the screen. And as I mentioned earlier, you've already paid a premium to see the movie.

I think that this article is the perfect context for Buy Nothing Day. Talk about excess and waste.

AdBusters (http://www.adbusters.org/

Adbusters?

Now contains ads for the "black spot" sneaker. (Which is a stupid idea IMHO - an "anti-brand"? But I do have to give them props for including their critics on their website.)

I guess it might be argued that those are not there for advertising revenue...maybe they are more along the lines of news.

Adbusters?

Now contains ads for the "black spot" sneaker. (Which is a stupid idea IMHO - an "anti-brand"? But I do have to give them props for including their critics on their website.)

I guess it might be argued that those are not there for advertising revenue...maybe they are more along the lines of news.

Heh. the funny thing about that is that such things have been tried in the past. problem is trying to find a television station or radio station to air it.

If you approach a station with such a thing, they will nicely turn you down saying "sorry. it isn't our policy to air anti-corperate ad's when those corperations pay us money to advertise for them, or have to potential to advertise with us in the future."

read more here: Media Carta

Theory: Many instances of depression are due to social injustice, apathy, the slow pace at which society reforms itself.

Concern: If we drug or electrically stimulate ourselves to keep ourselves happy, social progress comes to a halt. We feel good about ourselves, even though horrible things happen around us.

Here is a bibliography kept by AdBusters. I'm not sure how reliable a bibliography kept by AdBusters is, but these are things that we should be thinking about, and research that we should at least consider.

"The end of free Internet content will come when Web browsers start blocking online advertisements" Wrong. Maybe the end of free corporate-controlled content, but I for one believe human beings will continue to share information with each other. Jam Corporate Culture http://adbusters.org/home/

We have lost, almost completely, the concept of pandering as harmful. In the Divine Comedy, Dante put the panders in the sixth circle of Hell, lower (and hence worse than) than the murderers. Someday a lot of DoubleClick guys will join them...

I dropped my cable subscription a while ago and haven't watched Fox News in at least a year. This week, I was at a restaurant where Fox News was on the TV, and it's amazing just how bad it is. There is no debate. It's just one-sided hosts shoving opinions down the viewers' throats. Even the guests were tools. Almost as annoying were the regular news summaries, which were like watching Celebrity Justice.

Get one of these:

http://www.adbusters.org/metas/psycho/tvturnoff/

Uhm... There just *was* a TV Turnoff Week. April 25-May 1. Clearly, it didn't have much effect.

And when you learn more about how they target children, and aim tobacco and alcohol ads at them, and push for brand and trademark awareness by age four, well, I just can't feel sorry for them. As a human being with some shred of dignity left I have the perfect right to shut out any of the crap that they try to inject into my horizon, I just wish that I could do it offline.

We can focus on your points about Microsoft's actions and the debate surrounding the different parties and be open to new ideas... or we can be distracted by your interesting use of the dollar sign and what you mean by it.

Or we can do both. I'm surprised you even care about it in this forum. Depends the context: I probably would not use the abreviation if I was putting together a business proposal unless the targets were exceptionally laid back or fanatically anti-M$. ;-)

I use it on /. mainly to counteract the M$ propaganda most people see on their PC keyboards every day. M$ knows the value of commercial propaganda and mindshare (look at the number of times the the word "Microsoft" appears during M$Windows boot and elsewhere!) and I see no reason not to do my bit to neutralise that. I'm inspired a little by Adbusters magazine and culture jamming though I'm not sure where I saw it first.

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You communist! Breathing shared air!

You are now the owner of a pair of blackspot sneakers. I hope you feel a real sense of empowerment as you slip them on and, like so many others before you, embark on a life charged up with social activism.

Apparently you get a "vote" in the company for every pair of shoes you buy, but do you get profit-sharing? Who is getting the money? This really does seem just like a really ironic way of marketing to the neo-communist middle-America teens.

Does Buy Nothing Day exclude your ugly shoes?

I've also got a couple of small bits of art on the wall and some old computers (Spectrum, Apple IIc, Atari 400) on a shelf.

Impossible. All my free-thinking, non-conformist friends said that nobody is supposed to buy anything on the Friday after Thanksgiving. It was all over the blogosphere, people!

I find it impossible to believe that people will mindlessly conform to the wrong side. Adbusters has shown me the correct way to conform.

I'm not sure if you're being facetious or not, but you make a great point. They're not Nikes, but Adbusters has the sweatshop free Blackspot Sneaker.