curbing littering in NYC ideas

How about the use of self enforcing protocols to curb NYC litter?

The store receipt was invented primarily as an economic incentive against cash register theft [2]. If you do not get the receipt, your purchase is free. I saw this on Bruce Schneier's blog [2] . Similarly the cake cutting protocol [1] is another example of a self enforcing mechanism.

NYC Subways already have the "If you see something, say something" signs, asking customers to be the eyes and ears for everyone else. However, you really have no incentive to say something if you see something. Who cares? There is no economic incentive anyway. If someone is doing something strange, you can just get away from there. Who cares about everyone else?

But how about economic incentives? For example, what if returning old metrocards back to vending machines gave you a free fare or even just an extr a $0.05 off. Wouldn't you submit it to the vending machine as opposed to throwing it away?

The cool thing I noticed in Munich was the use of glassware even for "fast food" stands outside. You can't throw that stuff out, so there's no litter. Usually, you pay a small deposit on the beer stein ( maß glas ) and the value of the deposit is large enough so as to offset people stealing. Maybe we can't get Dunkin Donuts to start selling coffee in permanent containers, but Starbucks has filled up my coffee in containers I brought to them many times over. The incentive is a few cents off the cup actually. Pathmark also takes $ 0.02 off for every plastic bag you offset using your own bags. These are all ways to reduce the trash which may end up in the street.

Vigilante garbage collection. Well, I am curious to find out if the $0.05 value you can redeem from most plastic / aluminum bottles the result of someone's idea in the same direction of recycling. People essentially collect these bottles from all over the city to deposit them for the cash. This saves recycler fees of sorting all of those bottles out of the mixed trash piles and it guarantees part of the recycling rate ( what ratio of recyclables do get recycled ) .

But how about the every day person. Can we be vigilantes too ? Well I think street cleaning as a form of community service is a great idea when it comes to alternatives to jail time. The chain gangs in Arizona ( pink underwear ) are definitely part of an exaggeration, however.






References
[1] http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/value-self-enforcing-protocols-081009

[2] http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/06/aligning_intere.html

cool marketting method : Toyota

So now it looks like advertising is taking two completely separate paths: very subliminal and very direct. No one likes a salesperson telling you about crap you don't want. But the merchandise has to get sold. The two solutions are (A) subliminal advertising [1] and (B) very direct and obvious advertising [2], [3] .

Subliminal advertising is positioned below the radar and you have to be more than a casual observer to realize you are getting sold [1]. Now I think the opposite strategy is to be very direct about your intention, without beating around the bush or pretending you are doing something else. Even though the theme is parenthood in the Toyota Sienna commercials [3], it is still extremely obvious that this is an advertisement. The second unique part is the use of YouTube. Similarly, Verizon has their Big Red themed [4] silly ad. They bring you back to remember this chewing gum commercial, resurrecting its catchy idea, but reusing it to their advantage. The fact that their advertisement references the chewing gum is not at all a secret. They are playing with the idea right in front of you and you know it. There just happens to be something very appealing about a partnership.

A similar partnership is the combination of familiar Family Guy stylings into Priceline [5]. Will Shatner is reborn at the hands of Seth McFarlane. The concept is not hidden from your view at all, but the viewer is curious about what is going to happen. They are "committed" to the Family Guy perhaps, to the idea itself, and they are therefore more willing to hear what is going to happen in the ad.




References
[1] http://myklingingmindjog.blogspot.com/2010/02/fringe-subliminal-earthquake-adverts.html

[2] http://myklingingmindjog.blogspot.com/2010/02/smart-advertising-new-category.html

[3] http://www.youtube.com/sienna

[4] http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/2010/02/verizon-does-big-red-de-beers-ad-parodies.html

[5] http://www.pr-inside.com/priceline-com-negotiates-with-seth-r1030262.htm

Demasculinization in the media

Men outside of their normal SinCity tough guy roles have been creeping into the mainstream and now It is getting covered in the news. The Feb 8 Brian Lehrer show covered this topic with respect to the superbowl ads.

Dodge showed men mentally submitting to their wives whims to "be allowed" to indirectly reclaim their manhood. That Manhood is currently located in a vice jar under the sink and is thematically being compensated for with said car.

In a Dockers commercial, men are walking proud without pants and Dockers says men need to put the pants back on. Then Dockers is at least also being critical of unmanly men.

Men eating Doritos at the gym? Nah that is a "stretch" of an argument.

But the What About Brian show from TV did show the main character to be a very indecisive guy. The last few episodes showed Brian painting and cleaning and fixing for two women who moved in as his new neighbors. His friend the lawyer was much more decisive and indifferent for my taste.

I think that maybe male characters of earlier decades may have been more unrealistic in the other direction, but they were something better to look forward to. Cool hand Luke, Steven Segal, Bruce Lee, Charles Bronson in his westerns, Clint Eastwood in his westerns, Vin Diesel, The Rock, Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver, Pierce Brosnan in 007.

Speaking of The Rock, why is he a tooth fairy now? His image of the past has been cancelled.

This is the type of Neuro Linguistic Programming I was talking about in the earlier post. What is being advertised is not a product, but an image of man I frankly do not want to be exposed to. I am not saying we know enough about the mechanics of the rearing of boys to say what reprecutions this will have, but I do think that people I general need role models.

Well on the other hand, we have the Active.com run called Tough Mudder. The French-army-forces-designed obstacle course is a 7 mile run. The next in the series is being held in May.

Radiolab new normal human domestication

Experts and bias

Does becoming a noted expert mean you stick to your high horse? Is changing your mind become a quality experts should be immune to? Why was flip flopping seen as such a foible in the 2004 and 2008 US presidential campaigns?

I do remember Richard Dawkins had once recounted one of his professor's humble acceptance of having been wrong about one of his theories in favor of being witness to a new discovery.

Pride may be a reason for not accepting any of your opponent's reasoning, but it makes you appear stubborn, to put it crudely.

Or maybe sticking to your position is just your inability to be a clever argumentarian such as Socrates. I think credit should be given when it is deserved and accepting when you are wrong shows you to be the better man. That is, you may maintain your pride by being gracious at the fellow with whom yor are speaking for enriching you with something you did not know before.

Smart advertising. A new category?

Hulu Adzone , sponsored by Coke. Using Tweets FILTERED by the word "coke". So smart! Another perhaps 'category' for advertising?

FRinge subliminal earthquake adverts

The last Fringe included an earthquake that was not really an earthquake. It was the mixing of two universes concentrated on a building . The significance was that I believe it was no coincidence there was an Earthquake in Haiti.

It is perhaps already a many year long turn we are experiencing from boxed Ads you know are clearly ads. These are the ones we consciously avoid. Then there is product placement. When Jon Stewart puts an Apple Air laptop on his news desk or when Cadillacs are the car of choice in the Matrix movie, you are likely very aware of the Brand recognition.

But when a fiction quake is the center of a TV episode while Haiti is ruling the headlines, then we have entered the world of Neural Linguistic Programming.

The messages are delivered through side channels very creatively. I think that NLP advertising is a challenging new career uniting the experiences of psychology, marketing and graphic design.

When I was checking out a Picasso titled the Accordionist [1] at the First Fridays event at the Guggenheim two nights ago, I thought the description added a new
Twist. Apparently one of the owners of the work did not know the Cubistic painting's subject. The image is so abstract that he did not see an accordion or a person. Well art is that way. So then does that mean that everyone is affected by NLP advertising differenly? Do we need to tap Jung's archtypes to sell a product? And does the ability to see through the NLP smoke and mirrors come from one person 's individual collection of experiences ?

It has been said recent on On The Media I think that the puns and references delivered by TV personalities today are sometimes getting lost on younger viewers. They have not seen MASH or Cheers or experienced Ford or Carter.

The human experience of imagery is an illusion and we are strting to understand more about how it works. Hopefully the bountiful new areas of advertising steganography and anti-advert-filter-steganalysis will prove to be an interesting battle for those who think they must maintain control over their awareness and those whose job it is to invade it.

[1] http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/show-full/piece/?search=Accordionist&page=&f=Title&object=37.537

HTML5, AJAX, Flash and A{ppl,dob}e

discussions about the new HTML standard :

http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/

some cool stuff, because as I have learned, the indirect effect would make Flash and similar technologies obsolete, by enhancing what you can do with HTML.

I am rough-specing the description, but the behind the scenes say the low down is that Apple and Google are in charge of the HTML5 specification and Apple does not particularly like Adobe ( current owners of Flash ) :

http://mashable.com/2010/02/01/steve-jobs-google-adobe/

I may have been getting more excited than I should have been. I think HTML5 does introduce a lot of new dynamic content, but the point is that AJAX really is what they were talking about for the most part. AJAX ( which is under HTML after all ) already does replace a lot of the cool interactive interfaces that people are using flash for. The other subset of uses of flash, interactive youtube videos, may be more accessible by HTML5 if their embedding technology improves. Frankly I don't know, but working with existing standards like MPEG is great and the ability for Javascript to wonderfully capture what the user is doing could be enough of a "layer" to make the embedded MPEG content interactive so as to implement what Flash is doing in a non-standard way.