Kinect: You Are the Controlled 156
theodp writes "GeekWire reports on a newly-surfaced Microsoft patent application for 'Targeting Advertisements Based on Emotion', which describes how information gleaned from Kinects, webcams, online games, IMs, email, searches, webpage content, and browsers could be used to build an 'Emotional State Database' of individuals' emotions over time for advertisers to tap into. From the patent application: 'Weight-loss product advertisers may not want their advertisement to appear to users that are very happy. Because, a person that is really happy, is less likely to purchase a self-investment product that leverages on his or her shortcomings. But a really happy person may purchase electronic products or vacation packages. No club or party advertisers want to appear when the user is sad or crying. When the user is emotionally sad, advertisements about club parties would not be appropriate and may seem annoying or negative to the user. Online help or technical support advertisers want their advertisements to appear when the user is demonstrating a confused or frustrated emotional state.'"
Maybe not such a bad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why am I thinking of the old Clippy cartoon... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah. Also, noticing that you're getting ads for depressed people can be quite depressing.
On that note, when you are doing research, and you come across a company you have never heard of before, and go to their website, AND THEN SEE THE SAME FRICKIN BANNER ADD ON EVERY OTHER WEBSITE FOR WEEKS, does this actually make anyone want to buy the product? It actually drove me away from both Simple Mobile, and Data Foundry. And they both had products that actually sounded pretty good until I was hounded away...
Re:Why am I thinking of the old Clippy cartoon... (Score:5, Insightful)
In my experience with TV, no one should watch it.
Re:Maybe not such a bad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, where have we gone wrong? Somehow, ads seem to have become so important that they have to be crammed into every waking second of our lives (and perhaps into our sleeping time too, at some point). The amount of advertising still seems to be going up, with an every increasing number of commercial breaks, and more recently the annoying popups and overlays during the shows themselves. And everybody's sick of it. Yet there's no apparent consumer outcry for less advertising.
Sure, ads pay for part of the content, but at some point you'd think the market gets saturated. We can increase ads from 6 blocks an hour to 12, have constant overlays, product placement and perhaps ad jingles playing the the background of the show's audio track, but at some point consumers aren't going to buy more, and ad budgets are going to be exhausted. Or have companies entered into some sick arms race, were your ad *has* to be the loudest, and in all of the 12 commercial breaks during one show, in order to beat the competition?
Re:the sad thing is people will buy it (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, as long as you're going to be shown ads, you might as well
That's a defeatist attitude. Settling for less is the reason why we have a progressively less free, and less private society, and why people with power (influence & money, which is really money and money) continue to abuse people without consequence.
I refuse.
Advertisements are an abomination and only serve as an affront to an advanced and intellectual society. There is no amount of money, or shiny, that will get me to participate in such offensive and vapid wastes of time.
So I can't watch sports anymore because it is a screen full of advertisements. Big deal. If I really liked the sport so damned much... I could get off my ass and go do it. The only difference between me and NASCAR are the police who object to me driving like that.
So I can't purchase new consoles that want to destroy me freedom (specifically peaceful enjoyment of property) and take away my privacy so they can make even more money. Big freakin deal. There will be plenty of open source alternatives (Humble Bundle aint bad) and given enough time, technology like Kinect will be developed by competitors, hacked, and applied to open source alternatives that don't exploit you.
So I can't watch TV anymore. Yeah.... *huge* loss there. I have been set free since I stopped watching TV nearly 10 years ago. There are a couple of shows that I am interested in and I just pirate the web releases that have no commercials and no overlays during the programming itself. Pay for Netflix and purchase DVD box sets when I really like a show.
So I can't stand outside my car when I fill up with gas because those asshats want to put in 30 display screens playing advertisements WITH sound blaring. Fine, fuck-em. I get back in my car and turn on the music a little louder and relax till the indicator says it has stopped filling up.
So I can't get a magazine anymore. Big Whoop. The quality of journalism has plummeted into the depths of the sewer system since I grew up anyways. Far better off just purchasing a book that will have far more detailed information and analysis about a topic than a vapid, attention-getting-whore of a journalistic attempt in some paper.
So I can't listen to the radio anymore. Well that's a dying format anyways. A couple of dollars a month and I get commercial free music and programming at my fingertips, with premium options giving me more on demand control.
So I don't have a usable mailbox anymore because junk mail advertisers fill it up in 2 days with useless and environmentally unsustainable advertising. Solved that more than 10 years ago with a single private mailbox store that filters all presort class mail into the recycle bin for me.
So I can't surf the web anymore like I did when it was first created. Yeah.. that one did not affect me all that much since I was doing my best effort from the start to defeat tracking and prevent advertisements from hitting my screen at all. It is very rare that I encounter one now.
So I can't just allow anybody to email me anymore. I run my own mail server. A couple thousand aliases and counting. Anytime a single piece of SPAM makes it to the inbox (which made it past the filters and RBL's) I just destroy the alias and deliver a new one to the source if I deem it appropriate. My business cards have a random prefix plus my name that I print out. Makes it easier to manage.
In about another 10 years or so I will seriously consider a Kickstarter like project to create augmented reality glasses that can remove all advertisements from my field of view. Granted, that is quite problematic and has serious philosophical and societal implications, but let's face it, by then it will be all out techno-war for your attention and any hope at a peaceful quite life of intellectual pursuits will hinge upon your ability to tune out the massive amount of noise corporations want to throw at you.
Never give up. Never surrender. Plenty of options.. including the best move... not to play.
Re:the sad thing is people will buy it (Score:4, Insightful)
No, actually it isn't. What I'm talking about is the opportunity to turn "an affront to an advanced and intellectual society" into something actually informative. For me, the ideal advertisement is just like a tech site. Like Slashdot, for example. I learned about the Raspberry Pi here, and that's a product I'm interested in. Ideally, you'd only see advertising that you actually wanted to. And there are many that you do want to see, unless you make no monetary transactions whatsoever. I'd be interested in learning about places that offer organic vegetables nearby. I like to know which tech gizmos are being launched. Why should I shun out ads completely? Their current form is the problem. They are intrusive because they are competing with every other ad in existence, and stupid because they have little time to do so and people are plain uninterested in them (mainly because they are instrusive and stupid). I'll say it again: they can be made into something actually helpful. The fact that a lot of people can't see it says a lot about the low they have reached.
You're not talking about advertising.
You specifically came to Slashdot. Slashdot offered a review of the Raspberry Pi. It contained detailed technical specifications, examples of how it could be used, price comparisons with Arduino, Interesting, Insightful, and Informative comments from other users.
If you want to know about places that offer organic vegetables near you, you can go to a website similar to Slashdot that will offer reviews and directions.
Advertising is about manipulation and deception, and anytime accurate or relevant information has been imparted, it is only a consequence of law, and the minimum amount possible.
Advertising is also most objectionable when it actively interferes and interrupts with an activity. I don't give a flying fuck if I *LOVE* organic vegetables, don't fucking put an overlay up on my TV programming to tell me. Wait till I actively search out for food, and even then, don't manipulate me. Just give me the cold hard facts, because I asked for them.
Again: we shouldn't be declaring war on advertising. Not even in a metaphor. It's nonsensical and infeasible
Wrong on all counts.
1) We should be declaring war against anything that is an affront to common decency and intelligence. Advertising is about active manipulation and deceit for profit. Nothing about that is useful or beneficial to society in any way, shape, or form.
2) Nonsensical. How? It has an intelligent meaning. To avoid information that is purposefully deceitful and manipulative. It is also neither ridiculous or unreasonable to want to distance yourself from such unworthy material as it only cheapens your existence and is a waste of your mental faculties. A person actively avoiding such a nuisance would seem to be exhibiting good judgement.
3) Infeasible. Incorrect. I have removed the majority of advertisements from my life, and it has saved me money and time. I no longer spend over $100 per month on a content distribution system that cares nothing for my desires as a customer and only presents me as a product to the true customers. I am not bereft of digital content either. A plethora of books, music, and movies is at my fingertips on my terms, and 99.9% of the time it is legal! .
you'll be fighting a useless fight.
Far from useless. I'm winning. How many advertisements have I seen in the last 10 years? Practically none. How many have they tried to show me? Probably tens of thousands. In all honesty, it is most likely Advertisers 452, Me 1,124,198 over the last 10 years.
That isn't fighting, by the way, in any way, shape or form. It's just shunning out things that annoy you.
As opposed to allowing things that annoy me to continue to annoy me and stay close to me?
It's
Re:the sad thing is people will buy it (Score:4, Insightful)
Then it comes down to a disagreement over what a term means. Advertising, in practice, is in discordance with your definition. My definition, OTOH, fits perfectly.
That's fine, let's not make it about right or wrong definitions. I understand the concept you are trying to present and agree that it is vastly preferable to the current offering.
However, targeted advertisements will not take advantage of the fact I am looking for a cellphone and offer me reviews and technical data. It will be more vapid, manipulative, and deceitful media not designed to inform, but to get me to react and agree to their call to action.
It's really quite funny. I mean, I understand what you are saying, but it is not in reality.
Your preferred version of reality: Hey, dog. I have something over here that is nutritious, weighs x amount, tastes like a reasonable facsimile of bacon. It may, or may not contain, toxic substances from our dubiously sourced suppliers in China, where as you know, they eat you.
Reality: Look whats over here! I got Bacon! It's BACON! Come get it mother fucker! Come get it!
Even for someone like you, they could send offers of greatly priced earplugs and blindfolds for when you have to go out.
Cute. I am paying far too much attention to the women around me to notice bill boards, have music for earplugs (advanced solution), and can walk away from most areas that get too fucking annoying. For instance, I wholly stopped shopping at Walgreens the first time a motion activated advertisement started screaming at me about the product on the shelf right next to it. Fuck that noise. I don't need blindfolds and earplugs for that. Just don't walk into a Walgreens.
As for your rationale that you're winning, I can't really follow. You seem to think that, somehow, the advertising industry is keeping a score or something.
OMG. LMFAO.
They are keeping score. It's called Metrics and ROI. How else do you think those big firms justify their existence in the first place? There is actual data that shows the effectiveness of advertising.
I'm winning, quite simply, because my goal is to remove advertising from my life and their goal is to forcibly inject advertisement into my life. As well as collect data on me that violates the level of privacy I find desirable.
There you go. I'm winning and will continue to do so.
Your lofty idea that advertising can change, despite the privacy implications of targeted advertising is supremely cute. Cute, like believing in Santa Claus kind of cute.