One of the world’s biggest public relations (PR) corporations, Edelman, is in crisis. Caught out when other major PR concerns announced in 2014 that they would no longer work for climate-change deniers http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/aug/07/edelman-pr-climate-change-denial-campaigns, the group encountered further difficulties last month when word spread that it worked for the American Petroleum Institute (API) through a subsidiary, […]
TV IS THE FUTURE–AND THE 2014 MIDTERMS WILL PROVE IT
Netflix proudly proclaims that ‘[i]nternet TV is replacing linear TV. Apps are replacing channels, remote controls are disappearing, and screens are proliferating’http://ir.netflix.com/long-term-view.cfm. IBM disparages ‘Massive Passives … in the living room … a “lean back” mode in which consumers do little more than flip on the remote and scan programming.’ By contrast, it valorizes and […]
Big Corporations are the Problem with Big Data
Everybody’s going on about big data these days, from the Guardian’s Sustainable Business podcast (http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/big-data-sustainability-podcast) to the Financial Times (http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/21a6e7d8-b479-11e3-a09a-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2xXga2LUN) to AT&T (http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/t-big-data-shape-tv-creative/292313/). IBM estimates that 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are generated every day and 90% of all the information in the world was created over the last two years (http://www.carbontrust.com/news/2013/10/big-business-big-data-big-sustainability). Le Monde declares […]
Life as a Prosumer: The Post-Industrial Economy. Blech!
Coca-Cola hires African Americans to drive through the inner city, selling soda and incarnating hip-hop. AT&T pays San Francisco buskers to mention the company in their songs. Urban performance poets rhyme about Nissan cars for cash, simultaneously hawking, entertaining, and researching. Subway’s sandwich commercials are marketed as made by teenagers. Cultural-studies majors become designers. Graduate […]