Tuesday, April 23, 2019
Companies want to plaster the night sky with ads on satellites.
slate.com: Imagine you’ve stepped outside on a crisp, clear autumn evening. Ah, the beautiful night sky! The awe of the cosmos! How very small we are in this vast universe, tiny specks on this pale blue dot, lucky to exist in this geological instant that Earth is hospitable to life. Truly, the sky gives us the gift of perspective—wait, is that the Pepsi logo?
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The concept of advertising in the sky pisses me off beyond belief. Are buildings, clothes, roads, various forms of media and entertainment, and every other possible method of consumption not sufficient? What next? Are advertisers going to project ads onto glasses and contacts, or maybe car windshields? This is ridiculous. Just as we have to preserve nature from destruction by greedy folks, apparently the sky now needs protection as well. Under no circumstances will I ever look kindly upon an ad in the sky. That is a one way ticket to ensure that I never purchase goods from that organization ever again. I do think, however, that the use of this technology could have great potential for entertainment! The potential to create beautiful light shows at a moments' notice or create and display other art. In fact, it could probably even be used for emergency communications like amber alerts and weather warnings, general messages like holidays or the local weather report in major cities, and much, much more. With all this potential in mind, using this incredible technology solely for advertisement is the darkest road.
A similar article popped up last week, and many of my peers expressed their concern and disapproval for such advertising. Agreeing with them, this form of advertising would be catastrophic to the peaceful night sky as we know it. Luckily, this concept seems completely out of scope for companies right now and hopefully will fall through before it is ever executed. A thought that I have had since responding to the last article concerns itself with space trash. The amount of garbage floating around our atmosphere is an incredible amount and this form of advertisement would only add to it. The article talked about the potential burn out of these types of satellites with no way to repair them, they would simply be left orbiting the earth causing potential danger to other scientific satellites. While I think the idea or aerial advertisement is interesting, I believe there are better ways to do such a thing that is not as permanent as satellites disrupting the peaceful night sky.
I am completely enraged by the prospect of having commercial advertisements invading our skies, and utterly confused as to why such a thing is necessary. In such a consumerist society, is it not enough to see logos and ads on every billboard, TV, and phone? What could there possibly be to gain from displaying an ad in the night sky for the company? How would this unique form of advertising generate any kind of different appeal of the product itself? Who asked for this kind of high-tech expensive endeavor to begin with? This entire concept of placing artificial, man-made images into the sky is puzzling to me, not just from a (nature-loving) consumer perspective, but also from a marketing perspective. The author of the article is right-- StartRocket’s website is absurdly dystopian. I worry constantly about how future generations are incorporating technology into our everyday, and this is a perfect example of what I’m afraid of.
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