Posthuman Advertising

Datascience Day 2013, Berlin at Big Data Week 2013.

With the rise of wearable computers like Google Glass or smart agents with near human language interfaces like Siri the Internet can hardly be viewed as mere “virtual reality” anymore, it becomes more and more “augmented reality” – like an additional dimension of our body. Machine-to-machine communication is of rising influence for our lives: “the Internet of Things” of Self-driving cars, smart-metering, etc. connects our appliences with the Net’s data. Many services and devices act as gatekeepers for information: recommandation through engines or our social media connections build a filter that literarily surround us like a bubble. Advertising is of course particularily vulnerable by these filters. Thus classic media placements will less likely be able to contact us. Instead of using advertising psychology, advertising have to hack into our personal agents’ algorithms. This will be very similar to today’s search engine optimization. Promoting new goods would be trying to get into the high ranks of as many avatars’ preferences as possible. Of course, continuous business would only be sustained, if the product would be judged satisfying by our avatar when taken into consideration.

Speech: Virtual Broadcast

Speech: “Der virtuelle Rundfunk”

For media as public there are minimum requirements>

Non-discriminatory access (all information is equally available for all users)
Net neutrality (every publisher has the same right of distribution of his content)
Plurality (of choice)
Societal influence (transparent representation of ethic and cultural values)

In Europe’s and especially federal German media tradition since WWII this becomes particularly visible with broadcasting law. Out of these rules of democratic-political media culture the large public service broadcasting institutions were shaped, that took an important position in the public life of the European Societies.

As the Internet does not just substitute broadcasting (to adopted the regulations more or less unchanged would then be an easy task), but lead far above this classic media concept by displacing classic media in their relevance, the influence of these media on our society fades away.

Therefore we need a discussion on ‘Virtual Broadcasting’, on public or public-law Internet.