speculations

Dispatch from an advertising future #72

https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/07/30/apple-glass-users-may-be-able-to-manipulate-ar-images-with-any-real-object He’d never touched plastic. They’d been Hyggists before he’d been born. They’d seen simulations of child-raising during The Waste. Landfill mountains of the discarded paraphernalia of growing up… the toys! They’d read Speck’s Sustainable Sense Book of Baby and Child Care. Their family trod gently. So, on his birthday… Read the rest

Dispatch from an advertising future #71

https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/28/advertima-rings-up-17-5m-for-computer-vision-powered-behavioral-analytics-for-in-store-retail He took a deep breath in as the doors opened. It wasn’t the gently encouraging signage that appeared as he passed, or the patronising, approving messages that appeared on his trolley when he chose the ‘right’ things. He didn’t even mind the way the prices changed under the words:… Read the rest

Dispatch from an advertising future #70

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jul/29/tech-hearings-facebook-mark-zuckerberg-amazon-jeff-bezos-apple-tim-cook-google-sundar-pichai-congress The politicians sat in rows remembering the physical etiquette of the committee, after years of virtual meetings. The “techwraiths” lined up with their DeepMinds. @AOC, a veteran of “looking them in the eyes” had demanded they appear in-person but she couldn’t stop them bringing “advisors”. The agenda progressed as… Read the rest

Dispatch from an advertising futures #69

https://scitechdaily.com/mit-dream-research-interacts-directly-with-an-individuals-dreaming-brain-and-manipulates-the-content/ Ever since the ban, we’ve asked to be treated as creatives. Artists, authors, filmmakers have all been allowed in. We’ve not. We presented our award-winning work; research that showed people loved our content,showed our cultural impact. We made a strong case that we were a Creative Industry. But still… Read the rest

Dispatch from an advertising future #68

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/07/24/1005602/ai-hiring-promises-bias-free-job-hopping-prediction/ She couldn’t afford a job hacker. But she knew she couldn’t afford not to hire one. AIs had got better and ‘employability coaches’ that helped you steer your answers, no longer cut it. Advice on how to avoid appearing as a “job hopper” or a “activist” was just the… Read the rest

Dispatch from an advertising future #67

https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/23/pandora-launches-interactive-voice-ads-into-beta-testing She enjoyed playing with ads. The more literary-minded might call it ‘deconstruction’’; the more political, ‘ad jamming’. It was fun to see how many times it took saying “depends” to get the Voice to give up and play a jingle. The bed company that wanted to offer sleeping tips… Read the rest

Dispatch from an advertising future #66

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/07/16/1005284/openai-ai-gpt-2-generates-images/ Scamp (™): We’ll finish that for you. Times are tough. We’re all trying to make best use of the resources we have. We’d all love to have AI that is as creative as our human teams, but we’re not there yet. Here at Scamp (™), we don’t pretend our… Read the rest

Dispatch from an advertising future #65

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/marketers-learn-anything-from-return-qr-code-jerry-daykin They had always been “anti-chippers”. She still remembered the puzzled look on the midwife’s face when she’d refused the “simple procedure”… and the corporate goody bag. It had made parenting a little more difficult. Tracking the bio data and of course location, but it was the principle. It was… Read the rest