Author Topic: Tron, Marketing, and the Lost Future  (Read 803 times)

ZeaLitY

  • Entity
  • End of Timer (+10000)
  • *
  • Posts: 10795
  • Spring Breeze Dancin'
    • View Profile
    • My Compendium Staff Profile
Tron, Marketing, and the Lost Future
« on: February 21, 2011, 01:40:01 am »
A lot of my friends know that I have a rosy view of the early 1980s and the technological revolution that was going on. It feels as if I'm nostalgic for a decade I barely experienced. As futuristic synthesizers dominated the airwaves, personal computers began appearing in households across the world. Compact discs, Walkmans, VHS players, and camcorders flooded the market with unprecedented freedom of media. To my eyes, the world of electronics was unlocking a new era in human history. Factories in Japan filled with robots and just-in-time inventory systems that achieved unthinkable productivity. Our civilization would now be augmented with the exponentially-growing power of technology. Many futurists shared the same vision; those flying cars of the 1960s could barely compare with the images of science fiction that danced across movie screens. Later was now. Tron came along and offered excitingly unreal scenes of digital landscapes and the promise of a dazzling future. These developments ran on grooves of relative stability after the energy crisis and turbulence of the 1970s.

Can you sense the feeling? That this is the point at which humanity might shoot to the stars, and really fulfill all that incredible potential? The original trailer for Back to the Future captures it, as if the De Lorean time machine (accentuated with a stirring synth backing) is the culmination of all our effort; of our long ascent out of the dark ages and our evolutionary origins:

* Back to the Future Trailer

The future obviously didn't turn out that way. The 80s rolled into the 90s, and our system of consumerism and globalization continued. What became of technology? On the production side, it took productivity to even more amazing levels. But in a system as this, that often meant enriching shareholder value while discarding preempted employees. On the consumer side? Technology became an excellent tool...of content and media delivery. It's worse than those newsgroup users who lamented the appearance of AOL probably imagined. Entertainment now drives technology; at the low end, gaming and MMOs, HD TV and movie formats, and broadband access are the piercing influences. On the more intelligent side, news aggregators like reddit waste time by delivering a rush of pleasure from reading novel information, and expensive gadgets and cell phones have become lifestyle and status symbols. Like every brand of good or service before it—wines, hotels, cars, furniture, jewelry, food—technology has become an arena of consumption.

Of course there have been other extremely useful developments, like new medical technology, safer automobiles, and the option to use gadgets for meaningful enrichment and enterprise. But make no mistake about what drives consumption. Billions of dollars in research & development are poured into computing (and the marketing behind selling those bits of computing) for the purpose of satisfying extant markets. Development is handled by businesses that function in a capitalist system of generating a profit and rewarding shareholders. That means finding the best sources of business—right now, entertainment and lifestyle branding. An iPad is not a revolutionary tool like the pads of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but a symbol that one is affluent and also selective in their choice of gadgetry. An iPod is more than an MP3 player; it's a symbol of being current. Cell phones have been the domain of this branding for years, exploiting the taste competition among teens and adolescents. And games have been using "extreme marketing" from the beginning.

I just returned from watching Tron: Legacy another time. I saw it at the local grindhouse, built in the late 1940s and still sporting a 1980s audio/visual system, allowing patrons to feel like they're still in that decade. The film wonderfully hints at these developments in the beginning. The Encom Corporation was a leader in ethics and noble enterprise; Kevin Flynn intended his operating system to be free, and was driven by a desire to reshape the human condition for the better. This is why he developed the Grid, and spoke of a digital frontier. And in his absence? Encom has become a company driven by shareholder profit—as exemplified by the CEO, who exuberantly declares the last year was its most profitable ever, and that the new OS is different from the last version jokingly because they "slapped a 12 on the box". Kevin Flynn helplessly sits in his technological prison as the world outside speeds along its consumerist rails. Technology exists to please the consumer; money is funneled to management and the owners of the companies, and as Sam Flynn puts it, "the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer." The digital frontier and technological revolution lay unrealized.

Even the apparent gains in productivity can be misleading. Several people have now criticized "slacktivism", the self-serving feeling that trumpeting social issues on the Internet somehow makes a difference in the real world. Many forums set up to discuss movements have become ideological echo-boxes, much like a Tea Party convention where everyone is in riotous agreement and neatly confined in their own fantasy world. The promise of technology to truly help activism has rarely been exploited; Twitter's use in recent Arab revolutions and the Obama Presidential Campaign's web outreach are notable successes. And the benefits that an iPhone are Android might offer—portable Internet and information lookup, or GPS systems, among others—are usually drowned in a sea of useless texting and Twittering. The same goes for Facebook; more than a service for keeping track of friends, it's an expansive time-waster and pleasure-generator for consumers, and an important marketing research tool for producers.

The blame is two-fold: half of it goes on the humans who consume; who accept the system and mindlessly enjoy pleasure as their rights are eroded and the meaningfulness of their lives is surrendered to religion or forgotten. But this isn't a malicious blame; the game was stacked against us from the start, as the human condition is a difficult one, fraught with uneven playing grounds like hereditary diseases and our quirky brains. That other important half of the blame goes to the system. Some architects of capitalism will point to an alleged bright future for humanity, as capitalism drives innovation. But what do people really want? We're animals. As global warming has demonstrated, we're much more concerned with short-term pleasures and fears than we are with long-term issues. And what market has more demand than instant gratification? And what better to deliver it than technology, firing at the speed of light and broadband? This system rewards servicing markets. To accept this is to realize that in a world full of people who are pressured by tough conditions, not properly educated, or of meager ethical will, there will exist a mighty market for mediocrity.

Time-killing diversions, not technological revolutions, drive profit margins. We await the eighth generation of game consoles; the uniform adoption of 1080p video resolution; the next nVidia chipset; the new toy from Steve Jobs—and largely not the newest particle accelerator, creation of machine sentience, or similar breakthrough. Many people, poorly educated or tainted by fundamentalism and anti-intellectualism, even fear the aforementioned possibilities. The market is driven by such people. In this system, new developments are the responsibility of business. And we fund R&D with our consumer dollars for the product lines of entertainment and mass consumption. It's no wonder that NASA has fallen by the wayside; it's just not profitable. In the meantime, we have Popular Science and other publications and news blogs to remind us of amazing technological possibilities that never seem to materialize in our lifetimes. Humanity leaped from filth to opulence in the 19th and 20th centuries, and now we're spinning our wheels for the next feel-good.

Marketing is the executor of this system. Advertisement hones in on the largest market possible—which, on curves of intelligence and ethics, tends to favor the lower end—and appeals to their basest desires. It reinforces and romanticizes their traits and vain hopes, and dresses the advertised product or service in this reassuring, sycophantic atmosphere. It's the same in almost every case; beer and farm truck commercials appeal to the sexist redneck inside everyone, while iPhone commercials appeal to the insecure, conspicuous narcissist who yearns to appear hip and savvy. Green marketing has been used by solar panel firms and oil companies alike to appeal to the world-conscious consumer, while conservative entertainment advertising rounds up a host of offended people of privilege (whether gun owners or cigarette smokers) by unifying their sense of being encroached upon.

The Internet has replaced the need for marketing. In the age of radio and TV, it was necessary to be competitive and reach potential customers. That need has been destroyed by the ubiquity of web access. In its place should be models like DiskCompare and Newegg.com. DiskCompare is a fascinatingly effective website. Enter your desires for a hard drive, and it delivers a sortable list of drives, brand names, and retailers. It cuts through millions of dollars worth of institutional branding and delivers precious facts, allowing you to click through to product listings to further research if not yet satisfied. NewEgg is similar, and has a customer rating system that often reveals a history of hardware failures where simple marketing would never dare. Manufacturers are also invited to respond to negative customer ratings, which opens a helpful dialogue and promotes honesty. But more importantly, a better part of the world of consumer electronics can be access, sorted, compared, and purchased through NewEgg—no marketing required.

What's truly insidious is the scope of marketing—it creates pop culture all by itself, and reinforces terrible habits and norms by appealing to them in order to entice customers. It flatters, amuses, and pleases nastiness to get at their money, meanwhile glorifying these traits as far as the media will carry their message. Vintage advertisements are inseparable from studies of modern history, just as contemporary advertisements betray current trends (and sites like Sociological Images keep track of their effect). The Marlboro Man wasn't just an archetype of masculinity; he was a damn effective marketing tool that did considerable damage by romanticizing cigarette usage. The same goes for the eternally young wearer of the freshest shoes in Reebok; the determined athlete of Gatorade and Nike; the sexual monster of Axe cologne; the variety of rich and conscientious stereotypes who buy luxury cars; the teen woman who is unspeakably ugly and shy without Clearasil; the hardened rancher who chooses Ford trucks; or the many goddesses who achieved that status simply by using Olay or having the right taste in fashion. Marketing not only penetrates our reality with calculating influence—it creates it. And in doing so, it also wastes billions of dollars on ad-generation, sacrificing unthinkable amounts of money and human productivity just to kickstart wealth transfer in the consumerist system. (It also generates unthinkable amounts of spam and noise.)

Marketing is an outdated, corrupting influence on human civilization, and is perpetuated by a system that exploits and promotes the worst of society to generate the most profit for its investors and stewards. And when I imagine that future revolutionized by technology and the promise of illumination for human civilization, I pin a large share of the blame on marketing for delaying it. As long as the spoils go to the person who appeals to the lowest strains of humanity, striving for improvement and true, selfless innovation will be crippled—even more so as anti-government, anti-intellectual movements grow in the United States and attack some of the last institutions created for the "public good" still functioning. Why pursue a digital frontier when you can make a fast million helping people waste their time and feel smug? Even television has rotted, as channels like Discovery and National Geographic have begun hosting Ghost Hunters and other trash designed to generate ad dollars from the dregs of humanity. How refreshing that Tron: Legacy somewhat refrained from underestimating its audience. How apt, too, that on the Grid of Tron: Legacy, the minimalist art style forbade any product placement.

Boo the Gentleman Caller

  • Guru of Life Emeritus
  • Hero of Time (+5000)
  • *
  • Posts: 5262
    • View Profile
Re: Tron, Marketing, and the Lost Future
« Reply #1 on: February 21, 2011, 01:39:14 pm »
Zeality,

I normally don't involve myself in the in-depth forum discussions. I tend to take the stance that the communication element is lost without a voice-to-voice connection. However, this article is so true that I can't help from involving myself and responding.

When I started college I was a pre-med major. My parents had pushed me into medicine (biochemistry), but I realized that being a doctor would not make me happy at all - quite the opposite - so I changed my major. I had always enjoyed arts and culture, so I thought that marketing would be a perfect medium for me to explore my creativity while making good money. After spending a summer at a major marketing firm the summer between my Junior and Senior year, I realized that marketing was not my calling. It was shallow, nothing more but flash and glitz with the sole purpose of making money, only furthering the mass consumerism mentality that began to bother me. I didn't know what to do with my life and I became frustrated. The summer after I graduated I realized (by befriending the dean of my university's School of Arts and Science) that I had to do something productive with my life. I only get to live this life once and I do not want to waste this.

Ultimately I realized that a career education is the necessity I was called for; it allows me to give to my community. I decided to go to school to become a college professor (and hopefully a school dean eventually), where I can positively impact the system and aid those who need guidance at possibly the most important time of their life (the hinges of their career).

I hope that mankind can advance to a place where meaningful connections and the prospect of a worthwhile future becomes more important than the idle-time wasting of entertainment. Not that entertainment is bad, per se, but first-world nations no longer feel the need to survive - there is no struggle to survive, to feed oneself, to find shelter. Now that gaping void is replaced by meandering through our lives and sacrificing ourselves to media and entertainment.

(Edit: Oh, and I understood the same message you did from Tron: Legacy, and it's a shame that many don't see the message that exists in the film.)