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Showing posts from June 14, 2009

Selective breeding for advertisement?

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Humans shape their environment and ultimately the phenotype of animals either on purpose (agriculture, domestication), or inadvertently because of more or less random beliefs (remember the incredible story of the Heike-crab, described in Sagan's "Cosmos"?). Here is an idea (horrible perhaps). What if the natural environment (and the shape of living beings themselves) were used purposely as displays for advertising ? It would then be easy to imagine a full spectrum of dystopian scenarios: Bugs (butterflies, beetles) with logos on wings that would fly and "spread" the advertisement message (let's call them adbugs ). Then, we will have advertisement plagues or "spam swarms". Fungi that grows in logo-patterns on walls. That can be done through selective breeding... or genetic engineering. There will be aerosols to kill adbugs. Imagine fighting ads as we fight mosquitoes or natural diseases! Advertisement will find it