November 17, 2005

Big Help or Big Brother?

The Mandarin Hotel people now have a remarkable service in some of their hotels. As a regular customer, you enter your room and the temperature is set the way you want, your phone has your personalized answering message along with your favorite numbers on speed dial, the music you like to listen to is wafting over the sound system, and your minibar is stocked with the things you like. The list goes on, but you get the idea. It's all about recording people's behavior and then "playing it back" to them on their next visit.

It is the ultimate "have it your way" hotel experience.

But what if "your way" varies? Mmmm. No, you can't do that...not here in Stepford.

What Mandarin is doing is really no different than Amazon telling us what they think we'd like to read. It's just more personal.

I think it's misplaced. That is, when a store knows what we might want and saves us time in making either decisions or purchases, that's a valuable service. Mostly because it saves us time.

But how much time does it take to adjust a thermostat or change a TV channel?

What's stunning to me is the technology that enables the hotel to know virtually everything that has gone on in your room. In the wrong hands.....

Give a Little Something

Ralph Edwards, the creator of "Truth or Consequences" and "This is Your Life" has died. In his obituary, they note that once during a radio show in the midst of World War II, Edwards suggested that his listeners send a penny to a woman in Staten Island New York who wanted to plan a homecoming for her Marine son. More than 300,000 pennies were sent in.

So it made me wonder why more TV and radio personalities today don't use their platform, their power, and their air every single day to encourage their audiences to support one cause or another.

And then it made me think of that Edward R. Murrow speech that bookends George Clooney's brilliant film "Good Night and Good Luck." Murrow suggested that every few weeks the most popular TV shows should give up their time slots to programs on the major issues of the day.

It was a brilliant idea. Sure, it sounds idealistic. But what are the consequences of an uniformed or misinformed public? Just look at our country today and you see for yourself.

I see this as "program tithing," and I wish the networks would do it....just as I wish that the Lenos, Lettermans, Montels, and Marthas would use their influence and reach to regularly encourage their audiences to help out the many, many needy people in our world.