Posts tagged marketing
How Crystal Pepsi Anticipated Silicon Valley
Clarity is an ambiguous virtue today. It’s more frequently called “transparency” now, and the naive still advance it as a simple salve for all ills. But the ills of the early 1990s never left us. If anything, they doubled down, demonstrating how comparatively oversimplified issues like ozone depletion, statist territorialism, and rain forest conservation really were—simply being able to see the issues were supposed to lead to the implementation of their obvious remedies. Today that false dream remains, in the form of technological innovation that promises to “change the world” by producing an even more commercialized version of progress than we endured two decades ago. Would it be a step too far to call Silicon Valley one big, compostable bottle of Crystal Pepsi? Probably. The nostalgia you drink when you drink a reissued Crystal Pepsi is not a nostalgia for taste, nor for the gewgaws of the 1990s, nor even for the youth that might have accompanied the original. It is a nostalgia for a moment when a new secular, global righteousness seemed simple enough that drinking a branded cola could legitimately contribute to it.
via http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/08/when-crystal-pepsi-saved-the-world/495506/
Biotech firm creates fake rhino horn to reduce poaching
Pembient, based in San Francisco uses keratin – a type of fibrous protein – and rhino DNA to produce a dried powder which is then 3D printed into synthetic rhino horns which is genetically and spectrographically similar to original rhino horns.The company plans to release a beer brewed with the synthetic horn later this year in the Chinese market. The Chinese and Vietnamese rhino horn craze has caused an unprecedented surge in rhino poaching throughout Africa and Asia bringing the animal to the brink of extinction. In South Africa, home to 80 percent of Africa’s rhino population, 1,215 rhinos were killed in 2014.
My Experiment Opting Out of Big Data Made Me Look Like a Criminal
For months I had joked to my family that I was probably on a watch list for my excessive use of Tor and cash withdrawals […] the things I had to do to evade marketing detection looked suspiciously like illicit activities. All I was trying to do was to fight for the right for a transaction to be just a transaction, not an excuse for a thousand little trackers to follow me around. But avoiding the big-data dragnet meant that I not only looked like a rude family member or an inconsiderate friend, but I also looked like a bad citizen.,
‘Fair trade’ cocaine and ‘conflict-free’ opium: the future of online drug marketing
This digital alternative to street-based drug retailing rewards dealers for using innovative and non-violent methods of competition, and for providing quality goods and services. Drug consumers, meanwhile, are offered an unprecedented range of choice and information about products available. They are also treated with a civility that reflects their purchasing power.
Mars One to Muslims: End the fatwa and come fly with us
“Mars One respectfully requests GAIAE to cancel the Fatwa and make the greatest Rihla, or journey, of all times open for Muslims too. They can be the first Muslims to witness the signs of God’s creation in heaven, drawing upon the rich culture of travel and exploration of early Islam.”
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/02/20/mars-one-to-muslims-end-fatwa-and-come-fly-with-us/