Engage the Existentialist
And what about the best minds of our generation? They aren’t doing anything as romantic as Ginsburg’s friends, searching the angry gutter for a fix. No, some have been searching for ways to use technology to engage people in politics or non-profits. Others ride the subways joining blank faces beneath the pictures of smiling models. At the end of the day, they get cynical and drunk and boring someone in some sad café, or maybe these days some sad virtual world.
At their jobs, they try to find ways of separating their fellow human beings from their hard earned wages, perhaps by trying to come up with an engaging advertisement in one of these virtual worlds. It almost feels like Freeport in Neuromancer. Yet, perhaps, the joy that some people see as their hard earned wages get stripped from them in some virtual world is not unlike the joy that Sisyphus saw as the bolder rolled back down the hill.
Today, I am at Engage! Expo, a show about how advertisers and marketers can engage their audiences in virtual worlds. How engaging will the speakers be? What new insights will I come away with? Come back later and find out.