The Information Arms Race

The Information Arms Race (4)

According to Rushkoff, what is the ‚Information Arms Race‘ and who is winning it ? Can it be reversed? If so. How? If not, why not?

I think that Rushkoff believes the Information Arms Race is a race about who gets their ideas across first, whether it is through the media or otherwise. I think it also refers to our ability to let technology take over, I think that that is when we, as the public lose the race. I think the media is winning the race.

The information Arms Race can only be reversed if the population of the world as a whole is willing to submit to a reform where technology and the media take a much smaller part of our lives, where we are willing to switch the channel instead of letting ourselves be drawn in and freely influenced by what they show us. Realistically it can’t be reversed as the advertisers won’t sieze to try and sell their products and the government won’t stop censoring classified information and we, the general public, will always have a large section of lazy people who are unwilling to do anything about as they probably don’t even know what is going on or they choose to merely ‘go with the flow’.

Do you find yourself or your peers to be victims of target marketers? Explain. Focus on the word ‘victim’ and attempt to explain whether or not you feel you have been ‘victimized’.

Yes, I think that everyone in the world is a victim of target marketers, whether we are humming along to the song of a certain advertisement or we are buying a product at the opportunity cost of another at the supermarket because of it’s color appeal, we are all victims of target marketers .

To be victimized by such means of portrayal of information is sometimes out of our hand. Since they are around us for so long we start to believe that they are truly there and that the information is true. The word victim has multiple meanings according to the Dictionary. One of its meanings is ‘One who is harmed by or made to suffer from an act, circumstance, agency, or condition’, in this case the act is the advertising, or succumbing influence of advertising but in this case we wont necessarily be victims as sometimes we are not harmed or made to suffer. We might make unbalanced decisions but we are not necessarily harmed. Another definition is ‘a person who is tricked, swindled or taken advantage of’ in this case we are victims of target marketers. The job of a marketing person is to analyze the target market and find the ways that will most influence the people to buy their product or believe their idea. If there wasn’t a potential for people to be manipulated easy then such a job wouldn’t make the people who do it millions every year as they would be out of job.

As an individual, some of the decisions I make when buying a product might be based on it’s advertisement or