AllConsuming.org.uk

I told you it was just the tip of the iceberg. On the technology pages of the BBC at the end of last month there was a report on an advertising breakthroughs which could allow retailers to know our mood and therefore project appropriate adverts to us.

Sound familiar – it was part of the Tom Cruise Minority Report film.  He would walk through the mall and the adverts would recognize him and flip to a relevant product.

Now the Centre for Future Studies (what a creepy sounding organisation that is), commissioned of course by a digital advertising company is predicting adverts that can tell our mood through emotion recognition software. Drugs if we are depressed or Space Hoppers if we are happy I guess.  NEC in Japan already has technology that can guess our age and gender and serve up the right adverts.  If all this is linked up to information on social network sites then they could know all our likes and dislikes and find the right selling messages.

So far the outrage has come from the privacy lobby.  Of course that is a concern but isn’t the outrage the fact that human beings are fast becoming walking sales targets – our emotions and moods exploited to do just one thing – sell us more. We become he servants of the market machine.  It’s more Matrix than Minority Report. We think we are the advanced stage of a turbo-consumer society – but its only just begun.

Occasionally just occasionally someone, because of who they are, says something to make you sit up and take note. Its rare but it happened this weekend.  Andrew Witty the CEO of drugs giant GSK said some companies allowed to themselves to be seen as “detached from society” which was “completely wrong”.  On tax, and other matters one would presume like pay (Witty compared to his peers is only modestly remunerated), he said in an interview in the Observer “Its completely wrong to play and loose  with your connection with society”.

Is Witty a rogue CEO or a straw in the wind for a new form of capitalism? I hear whispers of Unilver looking seriously at their brand integrity.  M&S have their Plan A.  These might just be supped up CSR initiatives but new kinds of companies might be emerging.  Either is possible.

But what are the forces that can hold them to such ideals? The trade unions are still too weak – but is the crash and the moral outage from organisations like UK Uncut having an effect? We don’t know but Witty and others should be watched and encouraged. Capitalism will never fully reform itself from within but interesting models might emerge like the Quakers and the co-ops did. Varieties of capitalism are better than the greed is good model that has dominated for the last 30 years.

I liked this – its a bag from FCUK. It says:

This a woman

She is shopping again.

There is no point trying to understand this

I like it when capitalism  doesn’t pretend and lets us in on the joke of consumption – then and only then we know we are locked in because all there is to do is laugh. Laugh at ourselves and at stereotypes of woman.  We are in on the joke – even when the joke is us. All that matters today is we are in and not out.  There is only in.

Every minute of every day the search for profit wages an endless battle against the needs of people.  Our lives are relentlessly commoditised but wrapped up in a sweetly coated pill called seduction.  Mostly the market wins and another bit of our life becomes a space to sell us more stuff.  Occasionally society fights back and says this far and no further.  Here are examples in the news today.

The search for profit

Next week sees the rule on product placement swept away.  If companies want to be paid an estimated £150 million just for starters to place their products in prominent positions on our screens – why shouldn’t they?  If they start to influence the scripts and story lines – well who cares?  Not Ofcom the media regulator who decided not to regulate by saying no – or the politicians who have the ultimate say.

In defense of people

The government are looking to establish a lock on internet porn which requires parents to opt in, rather than out – therefore protecting children from being exposed so easily to hard pornography at whatever age they can click a mouse. A recent survey found that one in three children aged 10 had viewed porn on the net. The principle is a good one – that we should be able to opt in to whatever we want but mot be forced to view sexualized or commercialized messages whenever an industry wants us to.  The same rule should be applied to all outdoor adverts.  We should be free to decide what images we see.

This has been the week of tuition fees. What New Labour started with the introduction of variable fees and then the Browne inquiry to raise them the Coalition has now finished. Another realm moves decisively from the public to the private. Debt means making choices that pay off debt. Critical or social thinking wont pay the bills. Universities will become more like supermarkets – offering loss leader courses and the rest. Citizenship dies just a bit more and consumerism takes an even firmer grip on our lives.

But to every action there is a reaction. Thousands of young people have been radicalized by the sight of politicians saying one thing and then taking their hope away. And this time it wasn’t just the while well of middle class but school kids who rely on their EMA and bought the dream of going to Uni. They wont forget but who will they fight in the future?  Can they channel their anger and frustration?

I really liked this from Laurie Penny a young writer from the New Statesman:

“Many of these young people come from extremely deprived backgrounds, from communities where violence is a routine way of gaining respect and status. They have grown up learning that the only sure route out of a lifetime of poverty and violence is education — and now that education has been made inaccessible for many of them. Meanwhile, when children deface the statue of a racist, imperialist prime minister who ordered the military to march on protesting miners, the press calls it violence. When children are left bleeding into their brains after being attacked by the police, the press calls it legitimate force.

I helped to write this for Compass and a lot of good people signed up to it.  It’s one place to start.

While standing on a platform for a train that will never come, to go to work to earn money for stuff I don’t really need I looked at myself and thought ‘why am I doing this’.  Why not instead use the time to play with the kids in the snow?

Work is hard wired into us – but time to play used to be too. But there is no profit in real play only the commoditised versions of it. Instead we buy our time through labour saving devices but we never seem to have any more of it. Is someone playing us for a fool?

There is a constant struggle between the interests of society and that of free markets.  The nature of the relationship between the market and society, and who has the upper and at any one moment can be direct through individuals or groups – or it can be through the state.  I thought this was a good example of state intervention.  In Spain the government has ordered chewing gum firms to ensure their product is less sticky and therefore less messy on the streets.  It’s a small example but it shows what can be done.

In Britain the government is considering new curbs on alcohol and drink sales. Tobacco companies may be forced to sell their products in plain packaging and cut-price alcohol may be banned.  The market is only as free as we allow it to be.

Here is a report form a USAbased outfit arguing for s steady state economy.  I’m all for a low carbon economy, I too want my children to be bale breath you know, but ’steady state’ is such an awful term. It sounds dull, backward even. Nothing exciting will ever happen, it will just be errrr ’steady! We want creativity, dynamism and invention.  It is what makes us human. This has to be in low carbon technologies, goods and services and not high ones.  So who has got a better term? Steady now.

More queues today in central London today. This time for a new Lanvin range at H&M.  I write that like I know what Lanvin is – I don’t. Its obviously desirable and usually more expensive than the cut price offers being sold for the first time today. Luxury brands selling cheap entry level products is now commonplace. Luxury is for all. Even if its a cut price £1.99 cotton bag. It means you too can own a bit of luxury on the cheap.

People were queuing all night. Its not just about getting their first or cheapest its also about being part of the ‘event’. At best there could be cameras at worst it gives you bragging rights in the pub.  We can all feel a bit like celebrities even if it means spending eight hours in the dark on Regents Street.

Im trying hard not to consume.  In parts its practical – money is tight though I’m far more comfortable than many. But I’m also thinking again about anti-consumption. So new clothes are out and other extravagances.  Its not that I don’t have a wardrobe full of things I never wear.  But consumption is not just physical but emotional. On Saturday I consumed Athlete at the HMV Forum in Kentish Town. It of course used to be just the Forum and wasn’t adorned with a dog and a masters voice but such simplicity is now impossible. Live music brings in the troops and they need to be sold to.

Anyway Athlete were amazing – a crowd and a band in rare harmony – quite literally for most of the set.  Anyway, on my desert island of non consumption where I can take one thing – ill take Athlete.