I promised myself I wouldn’t go off on a rant again this week, and I had planned a nice mundane discussion of preferences in Mac OS X. Sorry. Not gonna happen. Maybe next week – something nice for Thanksgiving. Maybe.

Although certainly required in a capitalistic, market-driven society, I think advertising has gotten a little out of hand. And we seem to, as good capitalist citizens, be OK with that. We pay $9 to go to a movie, then sit blissfully through “the twenty” minutes of nothing but big-screen TV commercials before the trailers. Personally, I enjoy the trailers. They may be advertising, but they at least have something to contribute to the movie-going experience. Local orthodontist ads do not. But, I digress.

Recently I downloaded, as a service to you, the reader, the first episode of the TV show “Lost” from the iTunes Music Store. Refreshingly free of advertising (and riveting, I might add), the downloaded show is but 42.5 minutes long. That means that thirty percent of the hour it takes to watch the show on TV is comprised of, well, not-the-show.

Witness advertising’s stranglehold on the Internet. Sometimes you can even find actual content amidst the ads on web pages, if you look real close. The next step? Why not put advertising into computer programs as well? Open up Microsoft Word, for example, and at the top of the blank page an ad appears for a colored pill that remedies a malady no one ever knew they had before. After a Microsoft-determined period of time you can click off the ad and begin typing your document.

Sound far-fetched? The popular email client, Eudora, once installed, can be used in three modes. Pay for it ($50), and you get a full-featured email application. Don’t pay for it, and you can choose between a less-featured Lite version, or a full-featured “Sponsored” version with an ad window and up to “three sponsored toolbar links”.

But, why stop there? Although it’s a little late for Halloween, you wanna hear something really scary? Why not build advertising right into the operating system itself? Click on the “Start” button, and have one of the options be a link to an ad for a colored pill.

Mere fantasy? No. It’s coming. Sooner than you think. More next time.

© 2005 Peter F. Zimowski