Posted 20:54 by Evan

The Logo and its Discontents

Just a quick link to a brilliant rant from my friend Michael Taht about his efforts to eliminate brands from his life.

Michael used to work for one of the bigger banner-advertising firms on the web; at the same time, he was running an ad-filtering proxy server from his home. When I started reading the web via that proxy, it was flippin' amazing how much of a psychic burden the absence of banner ads lifted from my mind. It was like I'd been living in a vast cloud of poison, and never noticed it until I walked out of it one day, and breathed fresh air for the first time in years.

Reading via a proxy made a number of web pages work less well or not at all, and eventually I took one last deep breath, and willingly walked back into the poison--glad, at least, to know that it was a choice.

But I remember the feeling of peace... and I'm sure that if the brands and logos on all the objects in my home and office were to disappear tomorrow, that same feeling would be there again.

Bligs (0)