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Ford's In-Car Ads From Billboards
When I was just a lad admiring their Mustang convertibles, Ford had the following slogan: Ford Has A Better Idea (tm).
This time, I'm not so sure.
Ford has apparently patented a system that equips cars with sensors that can read billboards, scanning signs of all kinds, and then display relevant advertising messages inside your car on the dashboard display.
I'm pretty sure Philip K. Dick had a nightmare of similar proportions. In his 1964 novel The Simulacra, Dick envisions ads as annoying insects - commercial flies - that come right inside your car:
"Get off," he warned it. But the commercial, well-adhered, began to crawl, buffeted by the wind, toward the door and the entrance crack. It would soon have squeezed in and would be haranguing him in the cranky, garbagey fashion of the Nitz advertisements.
He could, as it came through the crack, kill it. It was alive, terribly mortal: the ad agencies, like nature, squandered hordes of them.
The commercial, flysized, began to buzz out its message as soon as it managed to force entry. "Say! Haven't you sometimes said to yourself, I'll bet other people in restaurants can see me! And you're puzzled as to what to do about this serious, baffling problem of being conspicuous, especially-"
Chic crushed it with his foot.
You might enjoy (or you might not enjoy) some of these proposed technologies:
Something sizzled to the right of him. A commercial, made by Theodorus Nitz, the worst house of all, had attached itself to his car.
Could artificial intelligence be used to create the most enticing advertisement the world has ever seen?
Uses special technology to transmit sound so close to you that you think its inside your head.
The software is able to capture both the people who clearly make eye contact with the ad, and the people who do not.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 5/3/2021)
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