Hillary Clinton anticipates a new fear about digital media:
"At the rate that technology is advancing, people will be implanting chips in our children to advertise directly into their brains and tell them what kind of products to buy," Clinton said at the Kaiser Family Foundation.
This future scenario is based on the present. In good science fiction fashion, Clinton explains:
The New York Democrat said the country was performing a "massive experiment" on kids who average more than six hours a day with media and advertising, soaking it up through TV, computers, games and iPods.
That story comes from the New York Daily News. Newsday confirms it ("she... didn't appear to be joking"), but I hereby add a grain of salt, especially as there doesn't seem to be a recording or accurate transcript available (anyone?).
Perhaps she's making a President's Analyst (1967) reference... but there's a tradition, now, of American presidential candidates and sitting presidents tapping the fearsome internet. For example, we noted John Kerry's interesting observation in 2003 about the need to clean up the net. Back in the 1990s, Bill Clinton supported the Communications Decency Act, prosecuting internet porn, quashing public crypto, and more. In Hillary Clinton's case, this sort of move plays into her centrist strategy. It also ties into her recent, yet apparently persistent, focus on digital media, including gaming.
There's a second angle to this statement, which is that swarms of Hillary-haters will seize on it. Some already have. That opens up a different discourse, with various strains of conservativism and a likely heaping of misogyny.
A third angle appears in the broader context of the Kaiser Family Foundation, where Clinton offered these remarks. Kaiser has been pressing computer games and other social, digital media recently. For instance, see their argument this week linking child obesity to digital media - not from sloth, mind, but because of another sin: in-game and web-based advertising. They call it "advergaming."
And a fourth angle: we've seen how media fears feed into media policy. I don't think this sort of speech will impact, say, RFID legislation, but it is likely to keep public worries about the scary web alive and kicking. Policymakers do listen to that sort of thing, and sometimes act.
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