The Cloud Foresight in Sliders

I found it very interesting how in the mid 90’ties (Dec. 1996) the series „Sliders“ portrayed a commercial dystopia. 

I loved the fact that the 24/7 mall was floating in a cloud and used seasonal occasions only to serve as a meaningless backdrop to sell more merchandise. Another theme in the episode was subliminal advertising as in mixing hidden messages into a video feed.

For me this episode represents a symbolic foresight of the world we live in today. The „cloud“ provides 24/7 shopping and hollows out any meaning holiday seasons normally stand for as they reduce them to mere shopping occasions. The subliminal advertising is also a fact of modern-day marketing and public relations.  The call to action isn’t spliced into the ads as „hidden frames“ but as subdermal emotional packages addressing primordial urges and basic needs (for example the famous „sex sells“ or even more sophisticated schemes for targeting audiences).