In high school I remember being shown the short film ‘HYPER-REALITY’ by Keiichi Matsuda. The futuristic overstimulating six minutes had stuck with me throughout the years, and it was a piece of media that I found myself recalling every time that I was faced with extremely agregious forms of advertising - like the first time I went to Times Square.

However, I had never actually rewatched it in the past 9 years. So imagine my surprise when it was required viewing this week for grad school. Watching this film again (at 1.5x speed of course), it was surprising how different it was from what I remembered. In high school I recall focusing on the slick animations and being filled with wonder at the concept of a high-fidelity wearable augmented reality device. This time however, I could barely stomach sitting through the whole thing. All of the bright flashing lights, annoying noises, and hypersaturation made me want to immediately click away, even though I knew that the intent of the film was to be reminiscent of annoying advertisements.

Even though advertisements have been around on the internet and in real life for as long as I have been conscious, I think my ability to stomach them has declined enourmously the older I get. In fact, I used to sit through way more advertisements as a kid watching tv, playing games online or even looking out the back window as my parents drove me to school. While it was once hard for me as a child to discern the difference between entertainment and advertisement, I now view any kind of media even resembling marketing with suspicion. And in talking to my friends what they are willing to pay for, and where they spend our time, I know I’m not alone in my growing intolerance towards advertising.

I attribute most of these changes to:

1) Valuing my time more as I have grown up. Especially as I started working and started being able to trade convenience for money. 2) Learning more about the commodification of attention and the myriad of things it is being used for. The book ‘Attention Merchants’ by Tim Wu was a good entry point.

While I think the film ‘HYPER-REALITY’ missed the mark in most of it’s premises -

  • Advertisement and tracking being extremely visible and distracting
  • Augmented reality wearable glasses being used in daily life and work
  • Loud, flashy advertisements being the norm

I think it’s still relevant to our relationships with technology and advertising today. However, most of the insiduous advitising today is hidden. Data brokers, targeted advertising, and influencer partnerships are all examples of advertising that is not in your face. But it controls your fate just as much as the heads up display shown in the short film. I think it creates a culture of posthumanism anxiety, where people are constantly unaware and unsure about what parts of their activity online and in real life is being monitored, collected, and used for to sell us more stuff that we probably don’t need.