(Fwd) Packard Bell commercial

[Heath Rezabek]

On Tue, 29 Oct 1996, Thomas Dowling wrote:

> Why should we do this?  What will we accomplish by bitching at PB?  So
> their advertising firm made a commercial that was unflattering to libraries
> and librarians--it isn't as if the mediascape are above doing the same to
> lawyers, dentists, fathers, and a number of other stock caricatures.

That very fact, however, is reflective of the state of the media; and as 
the Internet grows to absorb both the ideas and approaches of traditional 
media, its content will reflect its roots.  This approach to promotion of 
one's goods or services through smear of all-others is disheartening; if 
it becomes the norm for content on the Internet, as it has for 
television, then soon there won't be much here that remains worth archiving.

I'm not mailing to PB myself, as I have other irons in other fires; but 
to rebuke those who feel the need to do so seems a step closer to 
conceding this medium to a way of thinking which it doesn't have to 
inherit from its cathode-ray influence.


          Heath M Rezabek  hrezabek at gslis.utexas.edu
                           http://www.gslis.utexas.edu/~hrezabek/ndx.html
  GSLIS Masters Candidate  University of Texas at Austin
Technical Staff Assistant  Perry-Castaneda Library EIC
HTML Writers Guild Member  http://www.hwg.org/