I’m watching the Daily Show right now (Comcast in Washington, DC), and I’ve already seen 4 ads about clean coal (it’s 11:20).  Within the same commercial break, I’ve seen both of these commercials:

Washington’s metro stations and train cars are plastered in yellow ads with mermaids holding black rocks and the URL thisisreality.org. US News has an interesting blog post on the “reality campaign” here.

It’s clear that this debate is gaining momentum in this time of economic downturn. It seems that the stimulus bill, with its provisions for developing green jobs and sustainable energy sources is, perhaps, having an impact on our national energy outlook. But in the spirit of “shovel ready” projects, is clean coal the answer?

The fact is, there is no clean coal right now. Clean coal requires the development of systems and technologies that are not currently available. The “clean” part of clean coal is the idea that carbon released from the combustion of coal can be kept out of the atmosphere – using carbon capture and sequestration. Time Magazine, by no means a paragon of left-leaning values, explores some of the technology hurdles in this January article.

The NY Times has an interesting piece on how the stimulus is bringing back the clean coal rhetoric that we heard during the Presidential campaign last year. This is why the metro ads are back up and the Daily Show is alternately being sponsored by the pro- and con-clean coal lobbies.

[A digression on my personal views: Don't get me wrong - I think we should invest in research into clean coal through standard research mechanisms found in NSF, DOE, and EPA. I just think it's premature to invest in clean coal plants when the technology is fuzzy at best and certainly completely untested.]

What I find particularly interesting about these lobbying campaign is that one is far more sophisticated than the other. The Reality Campaign is hipper. It uses irony and some of the more recently popular advertising tactics, like the serial ads that don’t mean anything until you put them together (see mermaid reference above), or an unusual and annoying sound to recapture a viewer’s attention in a TV ad. Besides this, the creative is brilliant. What better way to draw attention to the drawbacks of coal than to choose a canary as your mascot?

On the other hand, the America’s Power campaign follows the typical political ad, simply replaying parts of Obama’s campaign speeches. While this attempts to capture the energy of “the moment”, I think they’ve missed their chance. The “Yes we can” chant at the end of the ad is so January 19th. From Inauguration Day onward, Obama has taken a much more sober tone in his speeches and with the economic troubles continuing, the sense of hope many of us experienced is being beaten down by layoffs, disappearing 401Ks, and the number of nominees with tax problems. I know Obama’s popularity is still up there, but we are no longer chanting “Yes we can!” So this campaign seems to have missed the moment altogether. I think it will be far less effective than the quirkiness and irony of the Reality Campaign.

Negative GDP Growth

Second Life is sometimes cited as being in a recession, due to its negative GDP growth for the second fiscal quarter in a row. Reports are coming out that the Second Life management may be issuing an economic stimulus package to help fix the issue.  ^[150]

 The Wikipedia entry on Second Life (SL) contains the above top-level section. I love it for two reasons:

1. The citation leads you to an SL forum archive that can only be accessed by paying residents of SL. You’ve got to be “in” to “get it”.
2. Wouldn’t it be amazing if an economic stimulus package worked in SL but didn’t in the real world?

I get a kick out of Second Life because of its potential as a vehicle for social science research. Linden Labs should be marketing the ‘game’ to as many political science, economics, and sociology departments as they can. (It might actually provide some hard science to back up the social part.) I personally can’t wait to check out the self-sustaining ecosystem developed on the island of Svarga once I get my avatar up and running.

These kinds of applications of massive multiplayer games (MMOGs) are the most interesting to me. I don’t have enough time to see all of my friends in real life (I’m with you Melissa!), so I can’t imagine having a second online life to worry about.

But I would love to see more research on the SL economy, and how it does/doesn’t mirror real world economics. This is an environment where land and programming skill are paramount, and distance means nothing. What impact does that have on the social structure? And how can we apply this to the ‘real’ world of the world wide web (which is similar in many ways)? Are people replicating their real lives inside SL, or are they living out alternate lives (or something in-between)?

And then there’s marketing in SL. In some cases it’s even more successful than anything else done online. In person, marketing folks hand out giveaways, free samples, and branded materials. In SL, they can do the same thing, but it’s got a longer lifespan. Instead of giving you a test drive of a new car, they can give away the car (or sell it for a small fee). Now I’m not clear on how realistic the driving experience would be, but boy does getting a free car in SL go a long way toward hitting those however many marketing impressions needed to create brand recognition…

Oh, and what’s with the last name thing?

When I first heard about the full body scanners being introduced at airport screening checkpoints, I was a little disturbed. The person viewing the scan could essentially see your naked silhouette. Granted, the scan reader would not be in the same room as you, nor would they ever actually see you in person, but I still felt it was an invasion of privacy.

Now I wonder if my problem was that I wasn’t getting much out of it. Certainly, the scanner has the potential to make air travel safer from terrorist attacks. But this is a very diffuse benefit and I have to say I was never really concerned about a terrorist attack on my plane given the very small number of airplane attacks.

Now here comes Google, which is delving into my life in a much more personal way than the x-ray scanners do. Google knows where I am (weather preferences & maps), what I’m doing (calendar), who I communicate with (Gmail & Gchat), what I’m reading (Google Reader & Google News), and what I’m interested in (Google Search, Google Reader, Gmail). And that’s just what I know Google knows.

But I find that I’m not as disturbed by this as I am by the idea of the photo above. I mean, I do get free (and customized) email, calendars, directions, weather, and more. I also happen to get advertising that is at least marginally relevant most of the time, and very unobtrusive. I will happily click on the sponsored link to reach my destination, even if the organic result is the top one.

For most consumers, I think the internet is still perceived as a free place. While we pay for a connection through our ISPs, wireless providers, or mooch off of free wifi/workplace access, the vast majority of things we do online are without cost. We watch videos, find new recipes, learn how to fix the AC control module in our car, communicate with friends and colleagues, and so on without ever spending a dime on those services. I love that I don’t need to rent a video, buy a recipe book, go see a mechanic, or pay for envelopes and postage (and find a post office).

In the end, of course we pay. Someone has to support the thousands of Google employees and hundreds of thousands of Google servers. Our eyeball time is our payment. But we don’t pay with cash and we don’t pay with time. Google doesn’t waste my time the way television does, but forcing me to occupy myself some other way during commercial breaks. It also doesn’t waste my time the way pop-up and pop-in ads do; I’m not forced to wade through irrelevant and, quite frankly, annoying information.

Because Google ads are customized to my searches, the text of my emails, the events in my calendar, etc., I’m generally not overwhelmed with information about lower car insurance when I don’t own a car (I contrast this with weather.com, which can customize by location, but it’s still all annoying junk advertising to me). Granted, every time a university’s name is mentioned in an email I get ads for calculating my chance of getting in or SAT/GRE/MCAT test prep services. But it’s not in the form of a dancing bear in the middle of my screen.

Until recently, I tried very hard to keep my email address private. I did not opt-in for emails from companies I frequently purchase from, but then recently realized that I actually do want information from them. Even though the benefit is far greater to them, I want to know when my favorite clothing store is having a sale,  I like getting book recommendations from Amazon, and my mass transit alerts have helped me avoid a hellish commute more than once.

I would love it if Google could give me all of that info, and if its ads were of interest to me most of the time. I would remain logged in to Google all the time so it could track my preferences and in turn provide me with more and better recommendations. In this way, I see Google as a big brother, looking out for underpriveledged me who doesn’t have the same incredible knowledge of the big bad web.

The benefit to Google is the higher click through rate and the promise to advertizers that their message really is getting to people who care, which all translates to higher income. Here is my first stumbling block. They’re making money off of me. Big money.

How does that change the equation in the long term? If profits start to fall, what will ensure they don’t take advantage of me in order to boost sales?

More thoughts later…