Is that it?

I was listening this morning to The Urbanist which is one of a range of podcasts from Monocle magazine.  Andrew Tuck was talking to photographers about billboards and the iconography of print advertising and they were also discussing the changes that billboard advertising is going through, as more and more possibilities are opened up by digital technology and the internet. You've seen them, I'm sure - digital advertising on the escalators in tube stations, screens at bus stops and so on. 


Now, I like Monocle - although, it has to be said, I like the idea of Monocle slightly more than I like the reality of Monocle; the reality, sadly, often comes over as insufferably smug.  But, having said that I like the programme and the philosophy behind it, I was really disappointed by the lack of imagination shown by the contributors to the programme.  


Is that what digital technology is for? To show us, in ever greater degrees of sophistication, the multitude of things that we could buy and the variety of ways in which we could spend money?  In the days after the local elections here in the UK, elections in which two thirds of the eligible population chose not to participate; in these days where the things we could buy are things we don't need, which we buy with money we don't have, isn't there something better we could do with this technology? Do we have to use it to shill yet more useless products on people?


Can't we, perhaps, use it to educate people? Can't we use it to raise consciousness of issues? To provoke public debate? To encourage people to talk to each other?  I'm not claiming to be an expert or to have all he answers but it just seems to me that we're setting the bar awfully low for ourselves. The internet is more than just a world-wide Argos catalogue. Perhaps we could use all this fantastic technology to, you know, make the world a bit of a better place?