According to BBC News article, "Targeted real-life adverts 'know who you are'", to personalize an advertisement to customers using your personal data, new technology is introduced. They are facial recognition which can analyse your demographic from your face, a chip that attach to product you buy and a moblie application that can gather informations from your usage history. A concern is raised by some people that being monitored by these technology invades privacy.
Advertising is a very rich industry. Clients are willing to spend millions of dollar to advertising agency for a successful campaign. I used to work in creative department in advertising company. I found that to create one campaign, one thing have to be considered is to find a way for an ad to reach consumer. The frequency of the target group involves in advertising is very important. A method we use in order to come up with the right channels to reach our consumer as many as we can is to think of their daily time schedule, from the minute they wake up to the time they go back to bed, and put our ad in every single thing. I think this effort to access to other people's life is annoying enough but with these technology it will come directly to you even more.
Actually, face recognition is an interesting tool. It was mentioned in the article that before it was used by advertising purpose, it was used for public safety. I recently saw this technology in art exhibition, "The Happy Show". This art piece is designed by Stefan Sagmeister, a famous graphic designer. It is a giant white type sculpture says "step up to it" placed in a dark room with a hole on a wall for people to see what inside. The face recognition is placed near the hole to detect the face of people that look in side. When people stand there and smile, the tool will detect your smiling face, and moving rainbow light will animate on the sculpture. Without any instruction, people figure out how it work and try to smile as while as they can so that the light keep on dancing, everyone leave the room with a smile. I think this is an good example of using technology in art and is much more creative than in the use in advertising.
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Thank you My.
ReplyDeleteA great post to read and respond to with my morning coffee.
I had seen that article, but only skimmed the title very quickly. Unfortunately I don't have time to read every article in the news that I think might interest me, but I'm glad you chose to read and report on it for us.
And I sort of think that's where this sort of technology is moving - it's gaining the ability to get to effectively get to know us so that it can pick out things that we might really be interested in. Of course, businesses will use this to advertise, just as governments use it for other purposes. I suspect the governments are more worth worrying about, as they too often seek to control far too much the personal affairs of citizens, by, for example, making up laws about who may sleep with whom and on what basis.
The next thing I thought of is that since we are made by our brains, I mean, our emotions, personality and everything that makes us us, and that since that is physical object obeying all the normal laws of physics, it is probably inevitable that technology will become better at predicting out actions than we are: technology, after all, is evolving far more rapidly than we are. Cool or creepy? I'm not sure which I think yet. Both?
And as I was finishing my review of PP's first draft of the essay persuading us to a proposition on the Dogon people, my brain must also have been working on this; it's just popped into my head that the situation is very similar to the shopping mall scenes in the Tom Cruise film Minority Report - a great film that I think discusses some of the same issues you raise in your response.
ReplyDeleteI especially remember the scene where, just after he has had new eyes implanted to conceal his true identity, Cruise (I forget his character's name in the film), doesn't learn who he now legally is until he's walking through a shop and the advertising screen greets him by name: a Japanese name!
And in case you are wondering from my comment above, I have reviewed all of your first drafts of the Dogon essays, and a related skill is our priority for this morning so that you are properly prepared for the homework today and tomorrow. And perhaps Saturday and Sunday.
DeleteI am interesting in graphic design, but I have no skill on the programs to make the great and creative one. My best friend is also study and working as the graphic designer. she had to invest in the tools that she uses for her study and career. She had to bought super computer, computer screen and other computer tools or equipments which are very expensive. When she does the animation stuffs or vdo, she needs these super computer to do that. And the out come are always perfect and wort.
ReplyDeleteThinking about it a bit more, I don't really find these sorts of technologies creepy so far. In fact, I love the way Google quikly, and increasingly accurately, guesses what I'm really searching for and suggests the best things first.
ReplyDeleteI guess there are risks, but for me, the benefits greatly outweigh creep factor. I wonder how I'll feel in another ten years or so when our computers really are as intelligent as we are? Although, they won't be as intelligent as us for very long - about one week at the most, I'd guess.
And now that I think of it, if a computer or machine we make is as intelligent as a human person and also conscious, does that mean it is a real person with all the "human" rights that go with being a person?
But my coffee's finished now, so someone else will have to take up these interesting questions that My's post raises.