Sponsored Detours En Route to Doom

The first rule of advertising since time immemorial, is that every blank surface represents someone losing money from not having an ad on it.

But if you’ve seen some places lately (Las Vegas, Hong Kong, the 4th-9th circles of Hell) you’ll understand that just like endangered species, polar ice and unemployed third-world children, we’re rapidly running out of unsold blank surfaces in our environment. So 21st century advertisers will need to become more devious.

There’s no reason to fear for the future of the ad industry and all its little tapeworm-like denizens, however… the principles of evolution apply even to the lowest life forms. (which is - say it with me - why we’re doomed!)

It turns out that IBM’s already on the case, having patented an idea that is so nefarious, you could add “and also put poison in chocolate milk” without making it any worse.

When the Global Positioning Satellite system was opened up for civilian use in the 1990s, it represented a genuine boon to everything from industry to scientific research, and even our everyday lives. There’s a whole generation of people driving around today having never known what it was once like to be stuck somewhere without an automatic map at their fingertips.

GPS has one job to do, and it does it very well. So, some infernal prick thinks, why not muck around with it to make a few bucks?

According to this Slashdot article, an IBM employee has come up with the idea of a system which would enable advertising to affect your GPS routing - it would allow retailers to:

“pay a fee in return for having your route calculation service de-optimize driving instructions to make you do a drive-by of their stores, and an additional fee if GPS tracking of your car indicates you actually took the suboptimal route.”

After scampering back to Satan’s throne for a pat on the head, this opportunistic infection of a person went and filed for a patent of course.

So someday, imagine how mourners in a funeral procession could be subtly guided past the local fitness club… ambulances could be coaxed to make a quick detour past a conveniently-located personal injury law firm… school buses could be affordably diverted to trundle past Catholic churches…

The patent filing mentions nothing about retaining any vestige of humanity or good taste, so let greed be your guide!

This approach has unlimited potential - hip new skrillex beats can be downloaded to pacemakers, traffic lights can be made to burn corporate logos into your brain while you wait helplessly, and why not load fire hydrants in key demographic areas with the latest energy-boosting sports drink?

Virtually anything which was created to do one job and do it well can be subverted and destroyed (or “monetized”) by marketing. All it takes in this land of freedom and opportunity is a gleam in the eye of some sphincter-faced enemy of decency to come up with another reason why we are doomed.