The Encroachment of Advertising

In class a few weeks ago, we discussed the encroachment of advertising onto the American citizen’s psyche. Websites and companies are permitted to save a citizen’s browsing history, and even read their emails for the purpose of centering advertisements around a citizen’s interests. While some think that this is a fair practice, I disagree. Many people like directed advertising because it makes shopping easier. They do not have to hunt down projects; the computer does that for them. However, in order to perform this targeted service, computers must encroach on people’s privacy.

But are advertisements so bad? You can simply click to exit out of them. Their encroachment is not absolute, that is, one can always escape the ads. However, recently, a new billboard was set up that can broadcast directly to an individual person. There is no opting out of this form of advertisement. One cannot simply click on it to make it go away. If you pass this billboard, you are going to listen to this advertisement, and that’s the end of that. Certainly it’s annoying, but more so than that, it is extremely pretentious. Never before have people had advertisements so forcibly thrust upon them. And while we might go out of our way to ignore such billboards, how long until it is impossible to walk down the street without having advertisements forced into one’s head? This is to say nothing of further advances in technology, which may allow for people to be assaulted as soon as they walk out of a store, or step out of their homes. People must be given the option to ignore advertising. Forcing us to listen to sales pitches is completely un-American.