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McLuhan's general position on advertising is that it can indeed be a legitimate mode of communication. Advertisement defuses high arts into the common consciousness. I would not like to argue against this stand, because I agree with the position that advertisement is a form of communication, but what I would like to discuss is that which is being advertised. Advertisement revolves around the commodity. The way advertising exists now is strictly a product of consumerism. It is a form of communication that is limited by the promotion of a good or service which is very often superficial and of minuscule importance in the scheme of the whole world. But what if advertising continued on with the "democratization of art" but with different intent and a de-emphasis on materialism and consumerism? What if the way in which news was presented to us was in the form of an ad? In class, we've talked about McLuhan's notion of selling your attention to companies that advertise towards you, so why couldn't we "sell" our attention to communicate with and pay attention to issues that really matter? This would not be profitable for the big company, unless if the sale of a good was somehow incorporated into the scheme. For example, if company X began an environmentally sound project in Honduras which was not only environmentally safe but also a benefit to Hondurans throughout the country, it could advertise its development and then say something like help our company continue these beneficial advances in Honduras and all over the world by buying our product, etc. But maybe the advertisement of world issues could go farther beyond what we currently understand advertisement as and not strive to sell a good or product at all. Since advertisement is an artistic means to communicate a certain message, that message can be decided by the creator. If this is true, then the creator can choose to not set the goal at promoting and selling a product in the way we know it but by selling and promoting information on serious issues in our world. I don't know what the effect would be, but if advertising works for the consumer world, why couldn't it work for the information world?