Life beyond advertising...

[Caruthers612]

         In the Technology section, I started two threads, one about the deep web, the other about the upcoming world of VR. I realized that what I've been wondering about since the release of iOS9 ties them both together and is the subject of a larger discussion.

         I should start by saying I am not an Apple user, so my knowledge of their lame-asses...<cough>...I mean their products is limited. A few days ago I read an article talking about how iOS9 is the first version of the Apple OS that blocks the web ads with which Google makes money, and that this meant that Google had a problem, both because it is already possible to block ads on the web, thus making sponsors possibly less likely now to give Google their money, especially since in addition to Mobile Safari's ad blocking capability, the app-based Facebook universe makes it impossible to block ads.

          Then I started thinking about a recent CNET story about how some media content will likely soon feature built-in, embedded advertising, something first discussed many years ago but now perhaps about to begin. I guess the idea is that women watching a pretty actress in a TV show, who has beautiful red hair, might click on her hair and be taken to a site featuring information about the hair products the actress uses and be able to purchase those products.

           So, my next thought was that the retailers and manufacturers who pay for embedded advertising in this way are not going to be passive about it and simply hope that people click on the right things, they're going to seek to influence and control content, the way investors in music, movies and TV shows have always sought creative control for this reason. In short, they will be sucking up our content.

            But soon the medium in which all this will be happening will be the immersive VR world in which we will eventually be spending more and more of our time. Not just playing games, but hanging out and socializing in virtual environments.

            For years I have been looking forward to this latter aspect more than anything else in this area of technology, because of the prospect of being able to design your own worlds, where you and friends or like-minded people can live and play and hang out, in privacy, with total freedom. Now, however, I'm wondering if the whole thing will be fucked from the start, because the makers of both the hardware and software involved in VR will be paying their bills by allowing intrusive advertising to be built right into the thing. Facebook owns Oculus, does that mean the trees and grass in a virtual world will be brought to us by Coca-Cola or Disney?

             So how do we escape this paradigm? How do we get to a web or an immersive VR world that is free of advertising so that we retain control and fuckheads don't intrude, and yet still enable people to make money?