I completely agree with you, but this is a straight up ancient problem, and if you don't believe me, you can ask Scaurus, maker of the best gaurum in Pompeii. The "get crowd's attention and monetize it" strategy has been around since the invention of begging. It's a fundamental strategy in any large group of people. The bigger the crowd, the better it is as a strategy. Sure, social psychologists and marketers are out there making better an better spam, but that's just tuning. As long as there are large groups of people and a way to communicate with them that's even slightly cheaper than the return, it'll never stop.
I suspect there is no solution, but it's interesting to consider some. What would a society look like if you somehow forcibly limited the number of people you could contact?
The first killer app of AR glasses will be blanking out adverts. I imagine putting on a pair and then all the ads just show my next calendar event or task list, or pictures of my kids.
Cuts out billboards, ads on the screen you're looking at, Nike swooshes on people's shoes.
Let me rejig that idea so it's more palatable to a VC audience that's primarily made its money by investing in ad platforms (FB, IG, Pinterest, Twitter).
1) v 1.0 - blanks out ads, the public rejoices
2) v 1.5 - allow ads from 'trusted partners'
3) v 2.0 - introduce a monthly subscription to blank out all ads
The first killer app of AR glasses will be ads in places where we couldn't have ads before. Your neighbor's lawn ? Ad space. The sky ? Ad space. Whirlpool in a toilet ? Ad space.
Imagine waking up, putting on your glasses and looking into the autumn morning sun, dawn. The rays break into golden lines of light. As the sun rises further, a capri sun ad. You sigh and fall back into you bed and stare at the ceiling, another ad taking advantage of the plainess. Be less Boring- Virgin Galactic.
Its sounds like dystopia but future generations will be collecting banner ads as a quaint little hobby like we do stamp collecting.
Now imagine that but on a cold, dark rainy day. Putting on AR glasses makes it look like your house is on a beach with the most beautiful morning sunlight view, except there's a company logo on the sun and the company slogan is floating on the sea surface.
This will work because the goggles and associated services are freely given away. Who would spend so much of their own money when they can have it for free with ads?
/sarcasm
Sigh. I guess it depends on whether you can afford the good version. I guess it will be a github project that only people who can operate a compiler and root their headset will be able to do.
>What would a society look like if you somehow forcibly limited the number of people you could contact?
You just need to look back into history and see. We've basically been increasing the reach of contact, being the end game: globalization.
So you'd have:
- several monopolies spread across many countries instead of Google for example;
- less massive companies like Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Apple;
- less access to services and goods;
- less emigration and brain power leakage;
- less economic growth;
- and the list goes on
Like this board wouldn't exist if you forced that limit.
Is this bad? I don't think it has to be bad necessarily, it's a choice that wasn't made in the past and some countries/organizations have benefited from it more then others.
I suspect there is no solution, but it's interesting to consider some. What would a society look like if you somehow forcibly limited the number of people you could contact?