This article talks a lot about using advertisement on the internet to make us all feel like a tourist at any location of the world they want to go to. In many ways this can be a good thing, however sometimes an image on the internet can serve as a visual marker using race and can not really be what you think you are seeing. This form of online tourism makes us believe that everything we see is real when in actuality it can be changed in photoshop to portray an image they want us to see. An example of this is in "Where do you want to go today?" with the image of the Arab on his camel, with the pyramids in the background.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Where Do You Want to Go Today?
Where do you want to go today? is Microsoft's slogan that is basically telling the consumer that they have access to "a world without limits". In other words they have access to a limitless cyber world where they can travel to wherever they are interested. We are all linked to a certain cyberculture which helps us to learn about whats going on in the world at the click of a mouse. William Gibson described cyberspace as "...A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions...a graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system". The internet is our cyberspace and a very large part of our culture today.
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4 comments:
I agree Chris with the point you make about the Nakamura reading. I hadn't thought of the photo shop angle. Like printed ads, digital ads use models and yet with photo shop you wouldn't even need to rent a camel or model, you could just paste one in there from the photo clip art file and compose it anyway you wanted.
This begs the question whether or not any digital imagery you see on the web is believable. Good post Chris.
Jennifer Wheeler
Good point about photoshop. Like Jennifer said I never looked at it from this angle of how easily a picture/image can be altered to meet ones needs. My only question for you (as well as Jennifer) is if you watched any of the commercicals from the Olympics and if you saw any that related to Nakamura's article?
I like how you brought up internet advertising. It reminds me of how personalized internet advertising has actually become. I see ads for dating websites that say things like "6 new single girls in vancouver!" and it makes me wonder just how complex internet advertising really is.
I also agree that photoshop and other forms of altering images and video on the internet are widely used. For the many people who don't understand this especially children on the internet, they may believe that everything they are seeing is true and can be done. I believe that it is up to the public using the internet to be aware that it may not all be true especially the perfect advertisements we see everywhere.
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