Program scripts from week of December 8, 2013
My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media. TV, radio, the movies and more. I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion. Call this the View from the Phlipside.
What is Privacy?
I was going to start this program by saying we were “returning” to the subject of online privacy but in reality it’s a topic that hasn’t ever really gone away. Concerns about our personal information range from the mundane worry about identity theft to the far more esoteric visions of Big Brother and the NSA looking over our shoulders monitoring everything we say, do or share online.
So let’s say that it has just bubbled back up to the surface once again. You’ve probably heard the story about so many of the big players in digital communication coming together to protest and push back on the NSA’s work online. Microsoft, Apple, Twitter, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn and AOL have sent a letter to the President and Congress outlining their grave concerns about the threat to individual liberties and the American business interests. It’s a fairly impressive grouping if only because most of those companies spend every waking hour plotting against one another.
Microsoft has gone even farther to protect its business interests. One of the concerns about the latest push for American based Internet security measures is that the U.S. government may use those laws to seize information belonging to foreign companies. The folks out in Redmond, Washington have issued a very clear statement that they would fight any such attempt.
I am not casting aspersions on the patriotic intentions of these companies but don’t underestimate the importance of the business angle to them. American companies have enormous investments all around the world. A serious attack on the privacy of those services would be a potentially crippling blow to the U.S. economy.
At the same time it doesn’t hurt to think about some more mundane potential infringements. Recent stories are showing a serious backlash against the Google Glass technology. Suddenly people are realizing that the person sitting across the room from them could be recording everything that is said and done there. Another story shows that intelligence agencies have been monitoring online gaming sites like World of Warcraft.
Privacy was actually much easier to maintain when more of our lives were actually private. As our lives are lived more and more in the digital community privacy becomes a far more elusive commodity.
In fact it may be time to reconsider the entire question of just what we mean by and want from, when it comes to privacy.
It’s interesting that the latest development in the ongoing struggle of the newspaper industry to come to grips with life online is to recognize that there is something to be retained from those traditions. The New York Times has just released it’s latest update of its “Today’s Paper” app for tablet and desktop. They looked at what the users of the earlier versions used most commonly. To the surprise of some folks it was the “Today’s Paper” section. Surprising because it was the part of the earlier app that is the most like an old fashion newspaper. The layout is designed to look like a newspaper. Everything is laid out just they way it would be in the print version of The Grey Lady.
I always find it funny when I hear modern information snobs sneer at the newspaper. The reality is that the newspaper is just the precursor to the modern aggregator website. Certainly the customization options were very limited but then you also had the expertise of professional journalist searching all the news of the world. A newspaper is just that, a news aggregating operation. They gather together all kinds of stories from many different sources. Today many of us think we’re better at picking the news we want to see. But the failure of that system is right there in that last sentence. You only see the news you want to see.
I find a lot of the current generation of news source web pages cluttered and annoying. Maybe the folks at the New York Times are onto something by going old school.
Squirrels!
So can someone out there explain the squirrels to me? All of a sudden I turn on my TV and it’s squirrels as far as the eye can see. Not cute little, furry Squirrel Nutkin kind of squirrels. Mostly evil, weird, aggressive, dangerous ones.
It started with coupon clipping squirrels. A husband has trained squirrels to help his family save money. Instead they rise revolt against a life of clipping servitude (and really who can blame them?) and attack the husband. All of this is supposed to make you want to shop at Sears. I’m still working on that one.
Then we move on to the man attacked by squirrels in the park. When suddenly surrounded by an entire squirrelly gang intent on doing him violence our hero in this one attempts to talk his way out of trouble. Surprisingly the squirrels do not respond to commands and, you guessed it, attack him. The flipside, you should pardon the expression, of this campaign shows the same guy sitting peacefully on his couch giving verbal instructions to his Direct-TV set finding nice movies for his children to watch.
The third ad that has a decidedly less violent squirrel presence but it’s no less creepy. A lady flying on a plane is suffering from some sort of intestinal distress. At which point the seat tray in front of her swings open to display a secret compartment. It contains the new travel version of Pepto Bismol and...a squirrel. This squirrel gets all inappropriately snuggly with the woman as it pitches the advantages of a little Pepto on the road.
At the end of all this my question is simple? Whose stupid idea are these ads? What’s the message I’m supposed to take away from this? All of these animals are just flat out scary. There’s no cute here, there’s no funny here, there’s just the stuff of childhood nightmares.
The part that’s really interesting is - did three different ad agencies come up with the same idea or has one agency made a major investment in these little animatronic squirrels and is pushing it on all their customers? Of course in the end someone at each one of the sponsors had to approve the campaign. So there’s actually a whole bunch of people who think that weird, dangerous, aggressive, creepy squirrels are a winning approach to selling stuff.
And that’s just nuts.
Call that the View From the Phlipside
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