On the airplane today I was interrupted by the pilot with an important message. I was expecting a warning of turbulence or notice that the flight would be delayed due to congestion in the destination airport, but I was wrong. It was an ad for a Bank of America credit card (15.24% APR for Signature, and 18.24% for Preferred). The pilot actually was trying to get people to sign up for credit cards, even to the extent of personally passing out the pamphlets marked with his moniker.
I am assuming that in the near future this will be just as accepted as TV commercials and storefront window ads, but I am again annoyed by the fact that big business is again making further inroads into my life.
When I was a kid, the only ads that I was aware of were in the media (TV, radio, magazines, and the newspaper) and on billboards. Today I see ads on park benches, as spam in my email inbox, above urinals, before movies, ubiquitously adorning webpages, on the outsides and insides of buses and trains, and even (*bleh*) proudly displayed across the chests and butts of all the people around me.
Todays betrayal both illustrates the competitive desperation of large companies, and reminds me of the few bastions of ad-free space still left. I look forward to my trip to the Olympic peninsula where I expect only a few ads assaulting me. I guess I should accept that as the future becomes more transparent, that too means that I cannot hide from big business.