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Is Advertising Morally Justifiable? The Importance of Protecting Our Attention
theodp writes: With Is Advertising Morally Justifiable?, philosopher Thomas Wells is out to change the way you think about Google and its ilk. Wells says: "Advertising is a natural resource extraction industry, like a fishery. Its business is the harvest and sale of human attention. We are the fish and we are not consulted. Two problems result from this. The solution to both requires legal recognition of the property rights of human beings over our attention. First, advertising imposes costs on individuals without permission or compensation. It extracts our precious attention and emits toxic by-products, such as the sale of our personal information to dodgy third parties. Second, you may have noticed that the world's fisheries are not in great shape. They are a standard example for explaining the theoretical concept of a tragedy of the commons, where rational maximising behaviour by individual harvesters leads to the unsustainable overexploitation of a resource. Expensively trained human attention is the fuel of twenty-first century capitalism. We are allowing a single industry to slash and burn vast amounts of this productive resource in search of a quick buck."
I can't remember ever encountering a Slashdot summary that had me literally shouting in agreement.
The thing is, though, we are being compensated for our attention, with exactly the thing most people are looking for, whether they'd admit to it or not -- novelty and stimulation. It's unfortunate, I think, that this "extraction process" is diverting our attention from more productive outlets. But when has it ever been different? When have the masses, the majority, ever voluntarily directed their attention to productive outlets, instead of directing it to escapism or religious ritual on the rare occasions when it's not consumed by the fight for basic survival?
Television in the U.S. gives us strong evidence that advertisers are "over-fishing" their audience.
Many years ago, shows on TV would be longer; and commercial breaks would be fewer and shorter. Some shows had only one sponsor: the "Colgate Comedy Hour", the "U.S. Steel Hour" (drama), "Milton Berl" (comedy sponsored by Texaco), "Armstrong Theater" (drama sponsored by Armstrong Floors and Carpets), "The Voice of Firestone" (both popular and classical vocal music sponsored by Firestone Tires), and "I Love Lucy" (comedy sponsored by Phillip Morris Tobacco).
Today, TV shows are shorter so that commercial breaks can be longer and more frequent. Furthermore, more commercials are packed into each break. I have counted advertisements for four different automobile manufacturers in a single break. I also notice the constant selling of health-care products -- both over-the-counter and prescription -- one right after another. And then there are the same commercials repeated during a single break. We are so saturated with TV advertising that few commercials create any lasting impression on consumers.
If I were the CEO of an automobile or pharmaceutical manufacturer, I would order my marketing department to insist that any TV commercial from my company must not appear during the same commercial break as a product from a competing company. Nor would I allow my commercials to appear within 15 minutes of another commercial break advertising products from a competing company. Yes, such restrictions would cost my company more than the current saturation placement of commercials; but the lasting impression of isolating my advertisements from my competitors would be worth the cost.
Exactly. The "we" discussed in TFS, and presumably in whatever it is summarizing, is not me, and therefore as far as I am concerned, resolve to a "them", as in, the person(s) who wrote it.
I don't pay any attention to advertising at all unless I am proactively seeking a product in a store, virtual or otherwise, and then only to specific instances that are relevant.
I don't watch broadcast television, I don't read billboards, I completely ignore banners and side-column ads, I don't open mail that isn't from a lawyer, a utility or some faction of the government, and I neither care what people want to put in ads nor am I affected by said content.
The only effect web ads have on me, at least until the IP shows up in my hosts list, is to slow pages down. Once it gets into the hosts list, it turns into an error message instead of an ad, and I ignore those too, while my browsing speeds back up (if you're not using your hosts file to nuke advertisers and their cookie-mining minions, you're foregoing a great tool, presuming you don't actually want to see ads, which I suppose is not a given.)
The only way they'll actually get my attention is with a sexy lady, and as the industry's kowtowing to political correctness has caused them to divest themselves of that particular tool, the advertisers, "they get nothing."
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
He's just saying what I've been thinking (and saying, but since I'm not a reknown philosopher, few listen) for many years.
If you know anything at all about the mind and the brain, you understand that attention isn't free.
Ditto. One other thing that bugs me is those "charity muggers" on every street corner trying to get your credit card details. One thing I've noticed since they were invented, is now I no longer talk to strangers. There was a time when someone came up to ask you the time, or directions or for a light, and I'd oblige, maybe kick off a conversation and generally exchange good will with a another human. Now all that goodwill has been stolen by charity muggers. The goodwill people used to have toward strangers has been stolen by their behavior. This was a real resource that now no longer exists, yet how do you measure the true cost?
Without looking at it, how can you figure out it is an advertisement or a caution / direction sign / legal announcement / public service announcement? You cannot.
Once you do look at it and it turns out to be an advertisement, you can continue your earlier thought process but your attention has been stolen from you, however little you value it.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.