[Nettime-bold] Companies and Love, or why i ditched my girlfriend for GAP.COM

["tim jaeger" <tim_in_flux@hotmail.com>]

re: THE LOGOS FIGHT BACK!!!

>KL Yes, not consciously. I'm basically trying to be a spontaneous,
>authentic human being who is talking to another human being.
>The exchange highlights one of the dilemmas facing the movement against
>brands.

COMPANIES AND LOVE..or why i ditched my girlfriend for GAP.COM

This live about being a "spontaneous, authentic human being" cracks me up. I 
see a definite parallel emerging between companies' marketing/advertising 
tactics and relationships, specifically "love"...

As companies try to take on human faces as much as possible rather than 
sending out bland (or exciting!!!!) messages to reach the populus, they'll 
have to address new data-formations in P2P networks, and, quite possibly, 
actually vie for relationship-space amongst the various people we have 
running on our network-organizers (whether it's a palm pilot, cell phone, 
e-book, whatever..). As they become more and more "human", like the article 
mentioned, they'll use more and diverse tactics like traces, gestures, 
colors, etc....reminding me of the various strategies we use to seduce 
lovers!

(thinking of the [CONTROL SPACE] section in the MUTATIONS book (rem 
koolhaas)).....if all the strategies companies are using so far resemble 
flirting, what will happen once they are able to communicate with us almost 
indistinguishably from "real people"? Leaving SMS messages that coincide 
with love letters, they'll move from the flirtation point of the 
relationship to the point where it'll become a full-out tryst. What will 
happen once a company has our contact info, stats, hours we shop, where we 
shop, with whom we shop, and they exploit this using the same tactics that 
we use in real relationships? How will we respond to companies using 
passive-aggressive behavior to win our attention, slightly antagonistic 
personal messages to throw us off balance, or even offers that are more 
appealing than those that our current lovers make? I can imagine a future 
where we have to tell our significant other that URBANOUTFITTERS.COM has 
done more research and investment into ourselves than they have, and they're 
more willing to adapt to our personal lives, offering the after-sex bedside 
chat (in whatever form), the sunday in the park, etc. all to keep us as part 
of their constituency.

Put simply, there doesn't seem to be anything stopping these types, and 
more, mutant types of formations from happening. I can't wait until the day 
when we have ".hum" as an extension to prove to the world that behind the 1s 
and 0s, behind the positioning, advertising, promotion, and expectations for 
others to "invest" in us, there is a living, breathing human being. Although 
at that point we won't be so sure..

quoting Guattari from CHAOSMOSIS, companies and humans will both have to 
"recompose their existential corporeality, to get our their repetitive 
impasses and, in a certain way, to resingularise themselves" in order to win 
our love, to keep the relationship going...

speculative nonfiction - tim jaeger



_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com


_______________________________________________
Nettime-bold mailing list
Nettime-bold@nettime.org
http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold