One thing that really upsets me is the way marketers view digital media. It really does. I don’t mean to go to negative-town, but I really need to explain it to those who just don’t get it.

If Philo T. Farnsworth , the inventor of television, were alive today, he would tell you about all of the hell David Sarnoff put him through.

I’ll let you research their story, but the point is, television and radio were made to be biased against interaction or control, whether intentional or not. Television without a remote control created an atmosphere where one would almost forcefully watch through commercial after commercial after commercial.

Unless one had a child (the hacker) at the set at all times to help you change the channel if an advertisement came on (trust me, this was my childhood job), your bottom line was set to unfortunately rely on corporate entertainment.

OK, so what’s done is done.

Interaction occurs. People can now fast-forward through those ads and forget about them entirely.

And, if product placement occurs, there are surely more places to find better entertainment for free (or, for goodness sake, play outside, even an outsider can do this as he/she now has easier access to find other outsiders to go to, let’s say, a renaissance faire).

The point is, I’m upset that marketers think that digital media is for them. It wasn’t set up to be. Sarnoff isn’t alive.

They can be part of the medium.  But, marketing the medium will surely hit the path of least resistance.