by KaiserJeep » Tue 16 Aug 2016, 14:40:49
Fixed embedded advertising in social media and web pages is an ancient idea from the decade we changed millennia, the 2000's. This is a long message, for which I apologise in advance, but it is important and I do know this topic. So read and ponder, please.
In the 2010's we recognize the user as they log in and tailor everything he/she sees to their particular world-view. Advertizing is tailored for age group, geographical consumer preferences, and both historical and recent search history.
The more subtle forms of advertising are product placements, in all network and cable and internet-only entertainment feeds. They are selling the placement of logos on major and minor appliances, cell phones, PCs, vehicles, and HDTVs. Not to mention snack food packaging, soft drink labels, pizza boxes, etc. When an advertiser is not found in a particular local market, one sees a blur in that logo area of the screen. There is a tiered advertizing structure in place with national, local/geographical, and consumer-specific advertising for sale to merchants. The means to personalize the advertising feed is the network browser software and the newer operating systems (everything since Windows 7 and Android 4, and I don't know what Apple versions) on PCs and mobile devices, and the Unix operating environments of all recent DVRs, streaming video devices, HDNA disk players, and the like. Disturbingly, this tech is now reaching into vehicle dashboards and even major appliances. There are for example smart refrigerators which recognize family members and remind the cook to replenish staples and verbally chide those on a diet for even opening the door. Down at the corner gas station here in Silicon Valley, the gas pump recognizes my credit card and shows me targeted advertizing on a color video screen as I pump gas into my Jeep.
YOU might have seen a CoCa Cola can in an actor's hand on prime time television. In another room of your house on a device which has another family member with a different file of consumer preferences, it might be a Pepsi or RC Cola label, on the same program at the same time. But unless that brand/name/label/logo was an essential part of the program plot, it's available for advertizing, and increasingly, product placement ads are being used (unfortunately in addition to rather than in place of commercials).
So many people are carrying cell phones, tablets, smartwatches, and other mobile devices around with them, not realizing that these items are broadcasting a digital identity and a precise GPS-derived location constantly. Their presence/location is detected by cell towers, Bluetooth devices mindlessly broadcast a digital ID, WiFi devices broadcast a unique MAC address associated with them, and some people even have medical devices embedded and attached to their bodies for medical professionals to monitor over the net. Heck, your dogs and cats are "chipped" with RFID tags, as are many kids too young to be on the net. RFIDs can also be read by loop antennas in doorways and mall entrances and public restrooms and park benches.
I have been watching this evolution and even after being an insider in the 'puter industry for the better part of four decades, the present rate of change amazes me. That it is occurring under the very noses of the consumers themselves, largely and increasingly unnoticed, is profoundly and completely disturbing.
I'm going to tell the truth now, which some of you will believe, and others will not.
You are recognized by your digital profile every time you are logged onto the worldwide network. Even if you use a different device, a different user name, and a different server. Even if you are in a cave in Afghanistan or on a boat out of sight of land or are thumbing a tiny cell keyboard in the outback desert or the remote mountains. None of our comm systems are private, including cell towers, satellite networks, broadcasts in the electromagnetic spectrum, and landlines for voice and data.
You can't hide. Your clumsy efforts to do so are the most interesting thing about you, since obviously you are trying to hide something. In fact, you might as well use a biometric device and log on with a fingerprint or a retina scan, because your profile is so distinctive, that you will be identified within minutes even when you are doing everything you know how to do to remain hidden. The harder you try to remain hidden, the better you are at it, the more interesting you become to government agencies, law enforcement, and to those marketing consumer-specific products to you.
Deep in the bowels of the NSA, the Russian and Chinese NSA equivalents, and the even more pervasive data collected at Microsoft and Google and Apple and nameless places you would not even recognize, your files grow and elaborate. How you spend your money, who you physically and virtually associate with, and the way these things are changing and evolving are all being recorded. You the individual have files in several places on the globe, and you are constantly being studied, by advertising bots, by government agencies, by law enforcement, by academic researchers, and by those who find amusement in plundering such data.
It doesn't matter whether you are Hillary Rodham Clinton, with corruption documented for anyone who cares to look, or someone who thinks an anonymous user name on PO.com protects their privacy. Every credit card purchase, every online transaction, your current physical location and recent travels, and your entire search history, your peculiar tastes in pornography of all sorts, your telephone calls, your (digital) music and (digital) video consumption habits, and every word you ever typed under every username into every forum your entire life, every photo you ever posted or viewed, every "like", everything and anyone you follow, it's all there, for anybody who is interested.
Nor does cash mean anything anymore. Every time you pull money out of an ATM, every time you handle cash within view of an HD camera, every time you give or receive serialized currency, a transaction is recorded, including every dollar bill and all higher valued notes. Even if you do such out of sight of cameras those bills will eventually show up in the view of another camera somewhere, and your transaction will be known, whether the other party is a drug dealer, a prostitute, a yard sale cashier, your kid, or a total stranger. Transactions with coins remain anonymous, unless within view of a camera. That could change any day, as obviously your spouse, your doctor, your insurance company, and nameless strangers working on candy advertising all have an interest in your eating habits, whether you like chocolate or nuts or trail mix, and how much you eat.
Everywhere you operate your vehicle, be it a car, truck, motorcycle, bicycle, airplane, or Segway scooter, your trip is known, as long as the license plate has passed within view of a network camera.
Every time you yourself pass within view of a network camera, your location is known. As time passes, facial and body contours change, and your file is carefully updated to reflect your latest biometric parameters, to better enable tracking your every move.
Networked high definition HD cameras are everywhere - I have four outside my home, which I access across the network to monitor my residence when I am away. I supplemented their feeble onboard infrared LEDs with infrared floodlights under the eaves of my home, to extend the night time range from fifteen to eighty feet, to match the day time range. When I was recently out of town attending a funeral, and then extended this to a two week vacation, I accessed these cameras across the net and notified a friend to pick up packages and brochures on the front porch, so the place would not appear vacant. I watched drug dealers who used the street for two days, and reported them via a police tipline - one that I am not so foolish as to believe is anonymous, nor do I believe that I am the only user of my cameras. Heck, I bought the things at Costco, and set up the offsite cloud storage and selected and decided to pay for a certain number of weeks of video storage, and if local law enforcement isn't using these cameras, they are pretty lame. Meanwhile they display recognizable faces, night and day, of my family, neighbors, and perfect strangers walking by my house, or entering my back yard or side yards. I recently saved the video of a bobcat in my backyard, and sent it to friends and relatives.
Are you beginning to understand? I have said these things on two other occasions over the last three years of my participation in this forum, and yet most of you don't seem to be following what I am saying, if this silly and so naive thread about advertising trends is anything to judge by.
YES, as a practicing EE who worked on this digital infrastructure, I bear a partial responsibility for the current state of affairs, as do thousands of others. All I can say is, I took joy in designing faster and faster computers, for over three decades, without thinking much about the consequences.
I've tried to stay as non-technical as possible in this post. I offer you three easily digestible sources of information, disguised as entertainment:
First, the 1998 Will Smith movie Enemy of the State. Charmingly dated, completely obsolete technology, yet a perfect example of the way things have been for decades, and the attitudes of a disbelieving public.
Secondly the recent (2011-2016) TV series Person of Interest. Slightly ahead of it's time when broadcast, now being eclipsed and obsoleted by current technology. Can be streamed in it's entirety on Amazon.com, and is currently being rebroadcast in syndication.
Thirdly the current USA network series Mr. Robot, which is highly entertaining, wickedly subversive, genre-bending, and endlessly inventive. The ultimate personification of evil is "Evil Corporation" whose logo of a lazy inclined capital "E" looks a lot like an Enron logo (purely a coincidence, I'm sure). The question of whether Elliot the protagonist is dangerously insane while he sabotages the worldwide network is still out with the jury. I've not decided whether this is science fiction, alternative history, or real history as seen by a mentally ill person - or all of these things - or something else entirely - but it could not be more fascinating to watch.
Don't try to absorb everything I have said at once. Remember that the shock of being subjected to a new worldview has seven stages which are shock or disbelief, denial, bargaining, guilt, anger, depression, and acceptance/hope. After several years, I am pulling out of stage 6.
Edit: You see, you WERE assimilated, years ago. You are now part of the network, as are most humans. Your digital virtual persona will survive your death. Historians of the future are data miners. Reality is no longer fixed, it is variable. Think about things like the standards for information acceptance at PO.com, for example. We have users that will challenge you to reveal your online sources before further interaction. They were assimilated before you, and their worldview is entirely networked and digital. I have a test question for you:
Do you believe that it would be a good, even progressive thing to do to enable online voting for the various government positions?
KaiserJeep 2.0, Neural Subnode 0010 0000 0001 0110 - 1001 0011 0011, Tertiary Adjunct to Unimatrix 0000 0000 0001
Resistance is Futile, YOU will be Assimilated.
Warning: Messages timestamped before April 1, 2016, 06:00 PST were posted by the unmodified human KaiserJeep 1.0