How To Split An Atom

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Every so often technology spills over into popular culture. If we are really lucky, this spill over takes the form of television advertising. No matter whether it is a spot for a video game or a PSA about piracy, commercials about technology are almost always wildly entertaining.

Here is a scattering of advertisements, PSAs and clips that take a look at what happens when tech issues are filtered into the popular culture.

Is That Steve Ballmer?

There really isn’t a setup that could do this video justice. It’s Steve Ballmer shilling Windows 1.0. I just have to assume that this is some kind of elaborate joke. If not, this video needs to be played before each and every one of his keynotes from this moment on.

You Wouldn’t Steal A Movie?

There is nothing like a jazzy soundtrack, quick scene changes, and a good old fashioned graffiti font to teach those dumb kids about the evils of piracy. If anything, I am sure that the number of handbag thefts went up for weeks after this PSA aired.

Don’t Copy That Floppy

Speaking of piracy.

Just as music had the cassette tape, software once had another form of disposable media — the floppy disk. Since big companies were terrified of their copies of Doom and Lotus Notes ending up in the hands of evil pirates, they enlisted the help of this fellow in the bowler hat. Who better to speak to kids in their own language and on their own level?

Get A Life Patty

Besides being almost as depressing as those “Say No To Drugs” commercials, what’s interesting about this is that the Ad Council doesn’t seem to realize that while I am sure there are a few creepy little girl bullies online, most cyber-bullies are a bit more…sweaty and male.

Yes, I know they were trying to use parallelism, but I think that whoever came up with the clever auditorium analogy may have lost the point.

Net Neutrality

One more serious one. I have to say, the people who put this together make an excellent point about the dangers of putting the Internet in the hands of the ISPs. I just wish that they weren’t quite so Orwellian about it. At least we know that the Internet of Tommorrow really is a series of tubes. I was starting to get a little bit worried.

Well, I Am A Corporate Executive

This is why government officials have a hard time taking video games seriously as a form of creative communication. Even when you take into account that this Ad was made close to twenty years ago for Atari, you’re still left feeling that they didn’t actually watch it before it went to press.

X-Box: Reloaded

Just to round out the list, here is a X-box commercial that proves that advertisers did learn something in the years since Atari. This is just cool.

Web 2.0 Roundup

If we can pick anything at all up from this it is that anytime we try to bring online cultural issues off, something is almost always lost in the translation. Dumbing things down for the “great unwashed masses” often causes advertisers to either lose what they were trying to convey, or to create something so ridiculous that the affect is lost.

That and the fact that Steve Ballmer would have made an excellent used car salesman.

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