From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: * X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.6 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_40,REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,1ea92c0e5255811d X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-03-08 08:30:15 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!titan03.ksc.nasa.gov!niven.ksc.nasa.gov!usenet From: "Stanley R. Allen" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Way OT: Adam Smith and Software Markets Date: Sat, 08 Mar 2003 10:22:00 -0600 Organization: NASA, Kennedy Space Center Message-ID: References: <1047043964.776224@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> <87isuvw9tb.fsf@inf.enst.fr> <1047052877.215272@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> Reply-To: Stanley_R_Allen@Raytheon.com NNTP-Posting-Host: sstf-fw.jsc.nasa.gov Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20021130 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en In-Reply-To: <1047052877.215272@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:35068 Date: 2003-03-08T10:22:00-06:00 List-Id: Hyman Rosen wrote: > Stanley R. Allen wrote: >> Cf, "The Hidden Persuaders" by Vance Packard. > > Wasn't he the "naked woman in the ice cubes" guy? No. Packard was a 'pop' sociologist and pushed no personal pet theories like Wilson Key. Packard's book just reports, in a popular format, about the work of marketers who use 'depth' (psychological) techniques. > Subliminal advertising works about as well as hypnosis > and telepathy, which is to say, not at all. Huh? Hypnosis doesn't work? Telepathy and hypnosis should not considered together as if they were similar things. Subliminal advertising was over-sold but it looks to have some basis in reality, and where it works it does so on the same principle as hypnosis -- suggestibility. You can think of any modern, sophisticated advertising effort (such as the cascading collection of Budweiser ads that are sprinkled through the various sporting events on TV) as an experiment on a broad range of levels of human consciousness. There are a number of stages of awareness and "subliminality" just refers the lowest levels. There is no magic to it, just like there is no voodoo associated with the idea of "the unconscious". It just means that sometimes we are not aware of some things, including our own motivations. The result of the ad experiment is measured as the cash the public spends on the product. Their goal is to make the selling and buying processes as unobtrusive as possible so that people simply don't notice being persuaded or purchasing (or even consuming!) the product. To a large extent they've succeeded. It's the triumph of science to conquer nature, and the science of marketing targets human nature. The last frame of this 'toon says it all: http://www240.pair.com/tomtom/media/arc/1993%20archive/93-04-27-advertising.gif BTW, budweiser and coca cola seem to have succeeded at a special kind of sub- or un-conscious marketing that directly relates to the success of languages like C and C++ -- cultural ubiquity. The assumptions that people make about their circumambient situation remain for the most part unexamined. So it's not a surprise that programming languages are chosen without much analysis -- whatever is provided as the norm is tacitly accepted. -- Stanley Allen mailto:Stanley_R_Allen@Raytheon.com