zed equals zee

[embedded YouTube video; if you can’t see it, click here]

I’m not terribly thrilled about the PC response to the Mac ads – don’t ad agencies ever consider that we might choose a computer for reasons other than because we want to belong to a cult of personality? And besides, if I did want to be part of a cult of personality, it wouldn’t be one that included Deepak Chopra – ick. But Girl Talk (Gregg Gillis) does get something exactly right in this ad, when he says, “Software, computers, it’s the most punk-rock thing that’s happened ever. People just come up with ideas – there’s twelve-year-olds who just hear music and then they go out and make something amazing.” You could make a pretty good argument that the DIY ethic of punk rock was a quarter-century ahead of its time – that while punk rock’s inception was in reaction to societal conformity, it’s only now achieving its logical expression, with the democratization of both the means of producing music and of distributing it.