ONGOING PROJECTS / THESIS / INTRODUCTION - 2.The new world

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THE NEW WORLD

“Alice opened the door and found
that it led into a small passage, not much larger
than a rat-hole: she knelt down and looked
along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw”

Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

We, the advertisers, have permeated every imaginable space, collectively showering our fellow citizens with 3000 daily offers, promises, offers of promises and promises of offers, enticements, seductions, solicitations, invitations, demands, recommendations and thinly disguised threats. That’s 187.5 every waking hour, 3.1 a minute.

We have taken over almost every other part of our fellow citizens’ lives. Our ads greet them at home and they welcome them to work; our ads are on TV, magazines, newspapers, radio, clothes, street signs, cars, buses, computer monitors, toys, cloth hangers, subways, stores, food items, bathroom stalls, telephones, trash receptacles, parking meters, bills, ATMs, money, desks, flip-flops, soda cans, pizza boxes, coffee mugs, mirrors, tables, and homeless people. We have painted the sky and branded the beach sand.

We almost have run out of space.

Have you ever dreamt about working back at the time when life was simple, Bernbach, Bernays and Ogilvy were yet to be born, television was still a matter of science fiction and the information space was more like a stately ball room than a chaotic floor of a stock exchange? Would you, who complain about today’s media clutter by night and create more of it by day, would you jump into conversations, interrupt family dinners, sneak into bedrooms, knock on doors, spray-paint walls, feign romance and send unwanted letters like there’s no tomorrow?

What would have you done differently? Because you are standing at the door that is about to swing open to reveal sprawling cities, endless highways, virgin forests and other undeveloped property, so utterly devoid of anything branded that it is almost hard on the eyes, and the choice of what to make of it is now yours.

It is a strange world. It is a world where people kill without hate, die without pain, re-spawn and die again, hijack cars, operate spaceships, beat up perfect strangers, command lemmings, lunch on orcs, befriend elves, and nonchalantly save the universe one planet at a time. Armed to their teeth, they wield flaming swords and laser blasters. They carry gold coins and gems, and always pay cash.

It’s the world of computer games, the promised land of virtual reality where the wildest dreams come true that for the 30 years of its existence has remained largely impregnable to us. And if we are finally about to be ushered in, we’d better know the rules of the place where natives’ revenge can be swift and spectacular. If you are already afraid of a remote control, think of what an unleashed swarm of fire-spewing dragons can do to your precious billboard.

Remember how I asked you whether you could pitch a product to a god? That’s what this world is all about. We will be pitching to gods.

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