We’re All Monkeys on the Media/Technology Treadmill

betamaxSometimes when I’m writing jokes I start to have actual thoughts that don’t include punch lines.  Problematic when you’re trying to write comedy.  Today is one of those days.

A lot of the new material I’ve been working on for my next special is about technology, futurism, science… You know, stuff that will do great at bar shows with super drunk audiences.

As I was playing with some of the material today, this little cycle occurred to me:

  • Technology is advancing faster every day
  • With new tech comes new products that need buyers to survive
  • In order to sell new tech, companies need our attention on their ads
  • To draw eyeballs to ads, media company push out tons of content
  • Media companies quickly run out of useful things to push out and start pushing out waste of time stuff
  • We as readers are left to sift through what’s worthwhile and what isn’t, leaving us with less time and attention to create new technology

A new technology needs a market or it dies on the vine.  No company will sink money into tech that can’t be sold. However, the eventual marketing of the tech might actually be stunting the growth of further tech.  Or maybe we consider it a checks and balances thing.

And yes, the irony of you wasting your time reading this post has occurred to me. Maybe you should be getting some work done. 🙂

To me it seems like advertising is the weak link in the chain.  The big thing now is “content marketing”.  That just means instead of a banner ad we’ll stick the name of the company in the article and tell you how we’re using it.

It’s a step in the right direction because it’s less advertise-y and actually more effective at selling.  But it still ends up creating content that you probably don’t need to be reading because it’s there more as a service to the product than to the reader.

Maybe we’re headed towards a way to actually decouple advertising from media, but we’ll probably have sentient robots enslaving us before we get there.

And that’s where my brain gives out today.  Don’t worry, I’m playing with these thoughts in my head and will be creating jokes out of all of it.  And maybe….

…changing the world…. But more likely just telling jokes.


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