Unthinkable Loss of Revenue
Today’s medialens coincided with a small discussion today of newspapers in the US and UK, including the Guardian. Medialens’ regular analysis of British media are always thoughtful, and today’s was about the Guardian too.
Towards the end it discusses the “unthinkable loss of revenue” that will be inevitable when we cut back on biocidal advertising to avert climate change disaster:
We don’t know how media executives coped with the loss of tobacco advertising - we know it happened after being declared impossible. We are not specialists on how the British empire adjusted for the vast loss of revenue generated by the slave trade, although we know such a loss was declared insupportable (which it turned out not to be). We believe that we, all of us, need to look beyond blinkered, short-term self-interest towards enlightened self-interest rooted in compassion for the suffering that surrounds us and that is sure to increase. In 1914, the novelist Robert Tressell wrote: “Even if you are indifferent to your own fate – as you seem to be – you have no right to be indifferent to that of the child for whose existence in this world you are responsible. “Every man who is not helping to bring about a better state of affairs for the future is helping to perpetuate the present misery and is therefore the enemy of his own children.” (Tressell, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Oxford, 2005, p.129) If these are harsh words, how then are we to describe the future facing us? Why do we lavish so much time, energy and love on our children, and yet do nothing to save them from a terrifying, collapsing world that they are now almost certain to inherit?
Unthinkable loss of revenue is often one on of the objections to the idea that software developers should respect users’ freedom and community.
Media executives coping with the loss of tobacco advertising revenue, having declared it impossible, is quite close to the design business that it might be a rhetorical angle worth testing out. Hmmhmmm.
The Unthinkable Loss of Revenue by David Crossland, except the quotations and unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
November 1, 2007 |
Comments
Leave a Reply
