Comment by jpxxx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jpxxx | Hacker News Reader

Weird future moment: a 21st century industry titan has to use puppies, kitties, and children to sell a machine that freely dispenses the sum total of humanity's knowledge.

<passionate_rant>

Since I learned I was going to be a dad (in 7 months!), I've found these kinds of advertisements increasingly unsettling, in an uncanny-valley kind of way.

I love my tiny one. I've heard the quick little heartbeat. I'm largely responsible for if this little person grows up happy and healthy. The enormity of the ensuing feelings is impossible to express.

Uncanny valley situations arise when a simulation looks almost real, maybe 96% real, but the 4% difference is very unsettling because it just looks _off_. You feel a creeping sensation that something is wrong.

In this video, Google very poignantly portrays a bunch of vibrant people, children and fathers prominently featured. They are picking at the deepest heartstrings I've ever known. At the deepest anxieties and aspirations that it is possible to have in the human experience. It's 96% poignant.

But...they're doing this for what reason again? So they can sell me a $250 piece of electronics and absorb my family into their ecosystem? It's a 4% that makes the entire rest of it feel fake.

Turns out that cognitive dissonance relating to your children, even peripherally, is really uncomfortable. :/

</passionate_rant>

Hey, there's a reason "Won't somebody please think of the children?" is such a devastatingly effective argument. I've found it is an effective cognitive defense to learn to become pissed off that somebody would be so manipulative as to reach for that. It's the cognitive-emotional equivalent of grabbing you by the balls, and it's not a polite move.

Appeals to emotion rarely have any substance - but remember that sometimes there is other supporting evidence for arguments, even if an emotional appeal is used.

I don't mean to deny your gut/emotional response. But isn't all of capitalism based on the idea that two entities can make an exchange that is mutually beneficial?

On the purely economic level, Google is offering a hunk of electronics and software for $250. (There are secondary economic effects too; the Chromebook will encourage the use of Google services, etc).

On the emotional level, Google is offering an an experience and trying to show how it could be a part of your family life and make it better. And you are offering Google employees a chance to feel like they're making the world better (speaking as a Googler, I can say that I definitely care about that sort of thing).

As a completely honest question: do you feel this way about ads that sell diapers/baby-food/etc?

ps. Congratulations on fatherhood!

Thanks!

No, I don't really have this visceral reaction (or at least not nearly as much) to baby companies, but that is probably because none of their stuff that I've seen feels as starkly personal as this video. Maybe their stuff is 50% to 80% compelling, and thus doesn't make it into uncanny valley territory.

Also, because products more fundamentally require themes of babies / children / parenting, so discordance is limited anyway.

That's an interesting thought about the emotional exchange, I never thought of people in a company as recipients in an emotional exchange with their customers. Fascinating.

As a father myself raising little programmers, I can relate to your depth of feeling--well, about the kids anyway. If it's any help, on most days my little guys grab the nearest available electronic device with Web access to work on homework, to pretend to do homework, to work on their own websites, to check on their YouTube view count, to email their friends, chat online with grandpa (a former programmer), and so on. I only watched once, but that video didn't strike me as strangely inauthentic.

I'm just hoping that devices such as these can evolve to the point where ubiquitous, online touchscreen and laptop devices run HTML5-based apps that are effectively as good as any native app (for most types of apps) so that I don't have to teach these little ones a whole different programming stack for each device in the house.

Hey congrats, and I hear what you're saying about people tugging on heartstrings to sell stuff.

But I think the kid connection is a legit part of the point. In the developed world at least, $250 is getting into the range where something stops being an Expensive Piece of Electronics and starts being something that your kids can break without breaking the bank.

Many people would hesitate to give a more expensive laptop to a young kid. But something this cheap changes that equation. So the kid stuff in the ad isn't just heartstring-tugging, it's part of the point.

Showing an ad where a kid drops a laptop in the bathtub (um, maybe not quite that) and life goes on would be cool. Making an ad about a dead mom and playing sapping music to match a video hangout is over the top.

There was a shot with a kid walking on a closed chromebook.

Have you seen the Dear Sophie ad? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4vkVHijdQk

I've often wondered - do people really wish to see the earliest events of their lives? My parents took tons of videos and photos of me as I was growing up, but I've never felt the urge to look through them. Sometimes I think that these sorts of collections are more for parents to relive their children's early days (and as a parent of a 2 year old, I definitely feel like all the pictures and videos I take are more for me than my child when she's older).

<side_tangent>

Having worked in the advertising world at many points in my career, I completely understand the visceral reaction you're talking about (I now work in news).

When my son was born a year and a half ago, my wife and I agreed to a "no screen time" clause for him until the age of two. When he's around, there's no television, laptop screens, Netflix, or iPhones. Occasionally, exceptions occur, and it's not a big deal. NPR and Pandora are acceptable media alternatives in our household.

So far the results have been great. He LOVES to read, and has shown a general disinterest in television when it is on. As a bonus, I've already prevented him from exposure to thousands of advertisements.

For more: http://commercialfreechildhood.org/issue/screen-time

Best of luck to you and your new family.

</side_tangent>

Go for it. I grew up without TV other than occasional exposure. Its a good choice. There is an opportunity to introduce children to Wikipedia before TV now. Creation before consumption. Could be interesting. Clay Shirky wrote a lot about creation first.

Now that you mention it, I realize how creepy that must seem. I also realize that I have a huge barrier or boundary to feeling emotion about anything I see on an advertisement. It's like the most cynical piece of me dismisses all emotions with prejudice.

Because the latter is not a distinguishing characteristic. Everything does that now.

That's why it's a weird future moment. We're living in an era where all the information in the world is so readily available that the market for devices that can display this information is hugely competitive.

I had exactly the same weird future moment a few hours ago when I saw the Android event invite: "The playground is open" [1]. Got me thinking what Mad Men era execs would make of it all.

1. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/10/googles-october-29-an...

Good question, but the medium has changed. That's a media invitation card, that is guaranteed to be carried by online tech sites, but we'll likely never see in Mad Man era TV or print.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com