From: cyberoid@u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) Subject: Re: SOC: ""Make everyone on earth SEE things your way."" Really? Date: 14 Sep 1995 05:21:16 GMT Organization: Worldesign Inc., Seattle From cyberoid@u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) In article <199509111332.GAA25813@hitl.hitl.washington.edu>, PSOTKA, JOSEPH wrote: >From "PSOTKA, JOSEPH" >Perusasion and conformity to authority are not necesssarily interlinked in >as vile a way as Bob Jacobson proposes. I didn't see the add, but I know >there is always a flip side to persuasion; and that is the enormous >difficulty of getting new ideas out in a way that they are uynderstood. >Often new ideas confront conformity and are submerged and lost. Making >others see things your way offers the potential benefit of overthrowing >[Stuff deleted] My good friend Joe Psotka is too kind. Not having seen the ad, he can't recognize the allusion to 1984 inherent in the graphics -- but everyone whom I have queried, who has seen the ad, makes an immediate connection. It can't be accidental. (Having been an advertising creative director, I can vouch that in advertising, like film, everything you see is inten- tional.) The ad, by the way, wasn't so much about persuasion as it was about compulsion. Not, "Share with the world things as you see them," or even "Tell people how you want them to see things," but rather, "MAKE the world see things as you see them." That ain't persuasion as I know the meaning of the word, in genteel society. Maybe in totalitarian states. >Personally, I see an increase of pluralism as an inevitable extension of >human intellect, and SGI and visual thinking will help people more clearly >communicate and share ideas; and gradually acquire a truer vision of the >world. Noble sentiments, but they did not appear in the ad. For all the stuff about subtexts, I'm inclined to take advertising at face value. Pluralism is great, but the copywriter didn't have much to say about it, Joe. Bob