It is almost impossible to find a sanctuary where promotion does not reach you
Promotion, promotion, promotion … these are the buzz words, almost the religion of the new Intelligence Age!
Even as soon as you open your eyes in the morning, you are accosted by adverts, promotion and slogans screeching for your attention. Whether it’s on your bed clothes, against the walls, the electronic alarm clock or when you switch-on radio and TV, there’s just no escape from it.
Some poor souls never switch off these technological devices! How they are ever able to sleep is a mystery. Seemingly, they are too afraid of missing something, or maybe it’s an inborn addiction, the dangers of which are pointed out by modern research on the way toddlers react to digital devices.
Apart from the visuals, the constant noise, ever so softly, and the flickering of the screen must have some negative effect on the senses and body. But I’ll leave that to the scientists and medics to explore.
Over the last decade or so, promotion has surely taken the modern world by storm. No longer does one rely on store owners or attendants to make you aware of the latest gadgets, because some form of promotion has already attracted your interest earlier and you know exactly what you want.
Also, the entertainment industry, films, TV, concerts, live stage shows, can not survive but for promotion. Promotion itself has become a lucrative industry and is jealously protected by the advertising fraternity. Even the mighty television world has to bow down to the advertisers to secure income for future productions.
This reality very soon became evident in South Africa with the advent and start of television in the 1970’s when it was dogmatically announced that television was foremost to educate and inform viewers, and entertainment was only to support the former.
How the mighty has fallen!
Advertising, promotion and immediate coverage have now the say due to the thousands of millions in revenue it generates as income for producers, artists, presenters, performers and media owners including hangers-on. The world is a stage! Filled with free-thinking individuals and nobody may restrict or restrain anybody else’s freedom any longer.
This is called, as Yuval Harari in his book “Homo Deus” states, FREE CHOICES for twenty-first century liberals because they believe every human is a uniquely valuable individual, a viewpoint which religion has already stated thousands of years before.
But even as the recognition of man’s free will by modern intellectuals and liberals started emerging, it was closely followed by the promoting of cyber engineering, computers, robots and drones, all of which goes against a completely free will. After all, isn’t that the ultimate mandate of promotion – to make you change your mind in favour of something that you probably does not need, or would not agree to were you not constantly bombarded by both subtle and explicit messages targetting the “consumer” or the “voter” or the “emerging classes”.
A decade or so ago we were all making conscience decisions by promotions, and with the advent of computers we were all very smart with all possible information at our finger tips. Nowadays, robots, quickly but surely, are becoming much smarter and are even making decisions in a split second, leaving us groping for answers, and where does our perspective attitude now lead us?
E.T. go home ! — the world is a place of mysterious possibilities.
Richard S.
