Still, Bivens said, “Everyone we talk to loves the idea, but they’re afraid. We bury it in there so they see it all day, but they don’t see it. “If you have a group of people and you want to inspire them with hitting the 100% Club and a trip to Hawaii, we can put a photograph in there, for example.
“It’s open season as far as computer software is concerned,” said Mike Bivens, founder of Screen Team, a Laguna Beach-based software firm that is experimenting with subliminal messages in some of its screen savers.īivens says several corporate clients have been interested in using subliminals to motivate employees to work harder. The Federal Communications Commission has banned subliminal messages in broadcast media since the 1970s, when controversy erupted over a TV ad for a memory game called Husker Du that displayed the words, “Get it,” on the screen for a fraction of a second.
And the relative ease with which messages can be inserted into computer code, combined with the increasing hours people are spending in front of computer screens, leads some psychologists and media experts to believe that the potential for mind control-voluntary or involuntary-is greater in the new media than in any that came before it. Like all forms of media, subliminals are taking new shape in the digital age. But the concept of subliminal suasion caught hold of America’s cultural psyche, serving through the decades as a flash point for consumer suspicion of mass media even as it was embraced as a tool for self-improvement.