Let Your Fingers Do the Talking

On December 29, 1995, I was watching MTV and saw an ad that disturbed me so greatly that I immediately went to my computer and made a printout of the ad's headline. It has been on my bulletin board ever since. Here it is:



In addition to the date and channel, I wrote below it: "Ad for music/phone ordering business."

Basically, this was someone promoting something like iTunes before the beginning of ecommerce. You would dial the number, maybe talk to a human being to select some music or maybe go through some type of voicemail hell, and then give them your credit card information. And voilá, they would deliver you music, although I don't recall through what delivery mechanism; probably CDs.

It's interesting or maybe disturbing that in 2007, I can't fully muster the same outrage about the reduction of human beings to fingers (with credit cards) that I felt coursing through my being when I first saw the ad.

An additional 12 years of life in an über-consumer society can do that to you, I guess.