Memetics opens a way to consider human societies as superbrains, where individual people act as individual neurons. If so, ours may be on drugs.
First, let me make a short introduction at how some drugs work and what happens during withdrawal. For example, alcohol suppresses reception of a neurotransmitter glutaminate by neurons (see [1]). As a result, neurons become less excitable, somewhat more dumb, which brings the all well-known relaxation. However, in response the brain adapts eventually and starts to produce more of glutaminate, and individual neurons grow more receptors on their surface to counteract the dampening effect of alcohol. To visualize, imagine a meeting of people with ear plugs. Apparently, participants will talk louder and be more attentive to hear what other say. It does not happen overnight, but once it happens, dependency on alcohol is established. Once the action of alcohol is gone in the morning, the action of glutaminate is restored, but with the brain already adapted to a dampened one. It’s like all the people in that meeting got their hearing back, but they still cry out loud and listen attentively. The experience should be deafening, and so it is to the neurons of an alcoholic under withdrawal.Other drugs like marijuana or meth has an opposite effect. They enhance the action of certain neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamin and various endorphins. As a result, the brain adapts other way around decreasing the amount receptors on individual neurons and producing less serotonin. The result? Once the drug is gone, neurons cannot hear each other. Specifically, they cannot hear each other on the “happy” wave that endorphins are responsible for, hence producing bad mood and a lousy teamwork by neurons – a withdrawal. It’s like a bunch of people leaving a dance club with the music loudness above safe levels, and find themselves deafened. Only they cannot talk loud either. Whether neurons cannot hear each other because of loudness and noise, like after alcohol, or because of impaired voice and hearing, like in a case of marijuana, both ways they cannot work together. And when neurons cannot work together, your neural networks cannot function and your body functions go crazy. To put it simple, both ways you are extremely unhappy about your life.
One important thing is that both ways the brain adapts to function normally under the influence of a drug let it be alcohol or weed or other substances. What it means for the user is that he not only needs the substance to avoid withdrawal, he also needs an increased dosage to achieve the original positive effect. That’s how addiction is formed.
Now, that we are done with an introduction, let’s see how advertising operated in consumer societies during the last century. It’s no secret that we are bombarded with information. On average a modern human in a western society consumes in a month amount of information that his or her Middle Ages ancestors consumed in theirs whole lives. And a lot of this information is advertising.
Since the beginning in the second half of 19th Century, the amount of advertising has grown exponentially. Newspapers, which were a little more than local community bulletin boards and later a place for political speeches, now have multiplied in numbers and circulation in orders of magnitude and get most of their income from advertising. Few TV channels in the mid-20th Century become hundreds of TV channels, most of which dutifully pump advertising 15 minutes each hour into the consumers’ heads. And the latest delivery mechanism – Internet – is finally filling us with junk at a speed of light – literally, over optic fiber channels. It’s like our superbrain was pumped with foreign substances and neurotransmitters (newspapers, radio, TV, email, Internet…) to an extreme.
Some marketers (see for example, [Seth Godin]) even proclaim “the death of TV-industrial complex”, arguing that with a limited space in consumer heads and so much advertising going around, you simply cannot deliver the messages cost-efficiently anymore. However, if it would be simply competition for the fixed limited space in our brains, the cost of advertising versus it’s efficiency (really delivering the space in our brains) would be simply balanced by the market forces. TV advertising would still work, it’s just it would be marginally profitable, so any more advertisers would tip the balance to where it’s not worth money you paid for it anymore.
Is it the case? No. The same marketers state that TV advertising simply does not work anymore. Why? Because the space in our heads is not fixed, it’s not simply a matter of the highest bid. The space in our heads is shrinking. “Neurons” of our society actually adapt to the higher levels of “neurotransmitters”, advertising messages, and react appropriately with less sensitivity to them!
It’s especially easy to see with new media. In mid-90s email spam was a bonanza. Today, even putting aside anti-spam laws and spam filters, people are less and less click on unwanted advertising in their email box. And, anti-spam laws and spam filters did not came there by an accident, you can legitimately consider then as a part of “superbrain” adaptation to an assault of specific “neurotransmitters”. Similar changes happen to other “new media” – graphical banners, popups, pop-unders, adware…
Traditional media does not fare much better. People are turning off cable TV and watch TV less. Size of audience is shrinking. Today Fox’s highest rated show House gets 18.9 millions viewers (and 10 millions on reruns), CSI: Miami – 10.8 millions. Still not bad, but how it compares to 106 millions for the final episode of M*A*S*H in 1983?
Maybe some other traditional advertising fares better? How about direct mail advertising? I afraid, not. I personally know people, who turned all their billing and payment online and now throw all their mail to garbage without even considering it. The US Post mailbox became for them just another trash bin that needs to be cleaned up on a regular basis, that’s it. Here goes direct advertising.
Our society cannot function without passing information between people. This “superbrain” relies on the “neurons” – people – being connected and passing signals to each other, both generic and commercial. However, with the beginning of industrial age we started to raise the number of “neurotransmitters” – commercial advertising – like a drug user boosts amount of real neurotransmitters in his brain. A mechanical system would react simply: more signal, more response. A pseudo-biological system like society first reacted the same way, but then started to adapt. Like brain of a drug user would start to dampen signals, so did the society. Like with the brain of a drug user, our society started to require high dosage of “drug” – advertising – in order to function with the same elevated levels of business profitability. Like a drug user, we spent 20th Century raising the dosage until it finally got to the end.
Well, it’s not that bad after all. Human “neurons” are capable of utilizing different “neurotransmitters”. Switching from spam to popups and then to popunders shows how it works. There are also reserves of existing channels that can be utilized with fine tuning and intelligent approaches. Again, “new media” shows how it happens with banners replaced by animation, then by flash, then by Google style ads tuned up to the content of the hosting pages. But in the end, the truth is that we are coming to the point when increasing a dosage of the drug – the advertising – will not be possible anymore. And then we are in for a very bad withdrawal.
References
[Seth Godin] Purple Cow by Seth Godin – 2002, ISBN 1-59184-021-X
