Microsoft mixes global signifiers with images of its software in a hyperactive barrage. Not only are we subjected to more than three shots every two seconds this machine gun pace is supported by disruptive camera, lighting, and editing techniques such as flickering light, overexposure, jump cuts, jerky pans, objects passing in front of the camera, obtuse camera angles, extreme close-ups, use of a fish-eye lens, mixing black and white with color, decentered subjects. This accelerated hyperreal style is organized around what we might call cutting to discontinuity. Photographed physical reality flickers with the reality of the computer monitor, simulations. Texts are everywhere often in fragmented multi-lingual multi-genre forms.

bw statue of winged angel
bw European Bridge
c street with yellow billboard-and passers by
bw German text on a computer screen
c German school children standing on desks doing exercises
bw computer screens in office
bw hands on keyboard
bw conductor wearing dark glasses on trolley car
bw power lines (?)
bw silhouette of cathedral steeples
bw child playing violin
bw boy in ski cap
bw two boys (boy with ski cap) with older boy behind him
bw older man on office computer
c computer graph
bw image of bull with Ecoutez written across it
c image of black cowboy on side of van advertising meat products
c close-up of black cowboy
bw two women walking on street with scissors buttons in background
c blur of traffic on street with jump cut in middle
bw portrait of European older women with glasses
bw computer screen with column of Australia with a series prices next to each line
c computer graph
c fingers on key board
c Microsoft logo on start button
bw Old Euro male with business suit with Asian passerby’s
c extreme close up of a blue computer screen with numbers
bw black frame
c blue computer screen again
c woman bending over playfully holding a child
c image of encyclopedia like page of body organs on computer screen
with the words "ucivo z rocniku"
c close up of ear surrounded by text
c pan of several persons working at a computer station
bw excel with numbers highlighted in black
c computer screen "Les Glaciers du Mont" written on it. Then "Blanc as added on.
c Microsoft Excel logo
c bar graph with columns labeled "string", "wind"
c close-up of a bat on computer screen
c 4 children looking at computer screen
bw de-center close-up of black male
c woman in train using laptop
c close-up of laptop screen
bw pan of blurred image of males a computer station
bw close-up of hands on keyboard
c Islamic woman using a laptop
bw "e" sign lights up
bw "ideen" whole sign lights up
c computer screen of a paint program
bw "ideas" spelled across screen
bw man with accordion on street
bw "make trouble" superimposed on an elderly Asian face
c drawing of TV monitor on a stripped chest "Havier" is identified as creator
c extreme close up of computer screen with caption highlighted on a menu
bw make trouble superimposed over an Asian child’s face
c drawing of TV monitor on chest again
bw group of 5 persons on European street includes an older woman whose face has
already appeared. Image overexposures out.
c close up of smiling elderly Asian man missing a tooth. Image darkens.
bw half face of decentered black male
c woman at a computer
c "Just do" on blurred screen
bw close-up of Afghan girl
c image of cock pit from flight simulator software
c world trade center buildings in flight simulator
bw man in doorway
bw European skyline shot from low angle
bw European building with rapid light changes
bw European bridge
bw extreme close-up of woman. Half of her face is in darkness.
c woman street under el swinging her child
bw woman’s face again. Dark side lightens up
c close-up of woman on street with child sticking tongues out at each other.
bw woman in one frame of arched window
bw close-up of that women. She looks melancholy.
c close-up computer screen with Japanese pictograms
bw electric powerlines running through trees. Light flickers.
c computer golfer teeing off
c fish-eyed lens of city street
c young girl in profile
c computer bar graph
c close-up of cells and numbers appear
bw extreme close-up of part of a gray/white graphic
c close up of cells in 3D bar graph begin to appear in multiple colors
c face of European boy
c running tiger on computer screen
c young girl’s face titled back looking up
bw list of countries and prices next to them
c young girl again
c computer monitor--paint brush program
c computer screen with decentered window over a bluish purple image of unidentifiable mechanism
c computer image of child’s drawing of a spider
bw close of excel UK with series of prices in adjacent column
c close-up of Afghan girl, her eyes look away
bw wrinkled face of elderly Asian woman. She opens her eyes.
c blue screen of extreme close up of numbers in excel
c close-up color computer drawing of geometric face
c close-up of computer drawing of a dog house labeled spot
c excel graph
c close-up of pie graph with numbers abuse it
c child’s finger pressing keyboard
c close-up of three (overlapping) children’s face--one bobs up and down to get a
better look. "Where do you want to go?" Superimposes itself on these faces--fade
to black with tagline
bw Microsoft appears

Though the music and editing tightly choreograph the flood of images, they are nevertheless decontextualized signs which flow through communication circuits without historical or geographical reference points (Harvey, 1989; Olalquiaga, 1992). This disembedding process leaves no cultural history intact. This Microsoft commercial is premised on the use of fragmented decontextualized images. The flow of image particles mixes European with Asian, children and the elderly, black and white, home and office, the natural, the urban, and the simulated. Brought together they signify access and power in a global arena.

A globalized culture is chaotic rather than orderly--it is integrated and connected so that the meanings of its components are ‘relativized’ to one another but it is not unified or centralized. The absolute globalization of culture would involve the creation of a common but hyperdifferentiated field of value, taste, and style opportunities, accessible by each individual without constraint for purposes either of self-expression or consumption. (Waters, 1995, p.126)

This totally commodified culture mimics the marketplace. The hypercommodification of culture overwhelmed by signs and simulations in which ones status is associated with style choices which are hyperdifferentiating at accelerating rates. Like the shopping mall, it is composed of decontextualized signs plundered from a variety of referent systems-nature, history, and exotic cultures. Like surfing the Internet, there are neither coherent maps nor ultimate authority, just a cultural world in a permanent state of flux (Collins, 1995). This view of the global cultural economy is hyper-anomic. There is no center. Sign hierarchies are in constant flux. While the postmodernist view mimics McWorld in its description, it limits the hegemonic power of American culture and tends to see the logic of the capital resulting in cultural chaos. The structure of this Microsoft commercial mimics this chaos.

Microsoft celebrates the collapse of boundaries--physical reality and simulation, representation and reality, the social boundaries of age, ethnicity, gender, class and nationality. "The world will never be the same again" expresses the moment in which hyperdifferentiation becomes dedifferentiation. Not only are there no legitimate boundaries or limits, but also we are given the imperative ("make trouble") to create this new world. This ad celebrates creativity (Paint shop) and entrepreneurship (Excel) in a Microsofted world.

David Harvey stresses time/space compression as the basis for globalism: "Acceleration of all practices increases. In the era of consumption, distribution, and production, it is becoming almost instantaneous." Harvey also reminds us that the accelerated circulation of commodities is produced by the logic of capital. "By altering time and space, profit can be increased. Consequently, capital invades all social practices. Manipulating them to maximize profitability" (1989).

Microsoft celebrates not globalism, but global capitalism. They've become synonymous. Think global and it is impossible not to think of it as a global capitalist web of markets and airline routes. This commercial reminds us that the utopian spaces it celebrates take place in a commodified world signified by recurring shots of dollar signs and amounts filling the columns of an Excel screen. Perhaps the underlying message is that the computer software not only allows access to this chaotic but exhilarating world, but it also offers the way to organize and manage the chaos profitably thanks to Bill Gates.

The utopian plane that is constructed by the children's voices in concert with the photo montage is situated in a lot of images of older places (usually European architectural signifiers). But the buildings are old. This ad does not suggest that the dawning information age sponsored by Microsoft's interest in software sales requires anything more than the formerly rooted signifiers of tradition in Europe and Asia. This is important and bears noting -- Microsoft's vision is here distinct from other ads we have seen, where the revved up tech engine of modernity sweeps across the abstracted plane of globality, this ad still acknowledges the humanity of its participants with portraits of them. This continues a commitment on the part of Wieden & Kennedy to what we have previously referred to as universal humanism. This advertising style makes claim to being more realistic.

This ad seeks to effect an aura of enlightenment and fulfillment. The music prompts a sense of a new day dawning, THE ENERGY OF A NEW DAY

Speeds UP AFTER A LONG OPENING. AT FIRST VERY SLOW AND QUIET ON THE SOUNDTRACK.

The ads opens with the symbol of a winged FEMALE WARRIOR or angel?

Post-State World	Information Age	Global Humanism	We're Ready	Imagined Community