For several years now, Nike has made use an image of a snake coiled around a soccer ball for their ongoing "Don't Tread On Me" campaign in support of United States men's soccer.

A representation of the rattlesnake is also contained on the inside of their uniforms to be used in in the 2010 World Cup.

Personally, I've always associated this image with the US Marines and Navy, and so have been little dubious about the messaging here. Particularly, I was worried that this image suggested that we understand ourselves not as participants in the world's game, but rather as a kind of isolated, standoffish gang apart from the community of world footballers. The logo, it struck me, was not in the spirit of world sport that is supposed to underwrite the World Cup.

Having said that, I have become ambivalent about this issue after doing a bit more reading about the original locus of this symbol, the the Gadsden flag. To wit:

The use of the timber rattlesnake as a symbol of the US can be traced back to colonial days, and specifically to the publications of Benjamin Franklin. In 1751, Ben suggested that America ought to thank the British for their policy of sending convicted criminals to America by sending rattlesnakes to England. The Gadsden flag -- which bears this symbol -- is considered "one of the first flags of the United States," later replaced by the current Stars and Stripes flag.

"Since the Revolution," Wikipedia claims, "the flag has seen times of reintroduction as a symbol of American patriotism, a symbol of disagreement with government, or a symbol of support for civil liberties." On this view of the symbol, I think it's great. It says something about our national history, and celebrating that is certainly in the spirit of the World Cup.

In the end, I leave it to you to decide for yourself. There's more detail about the history of this symbol here.

Last week, some of you may have read about Nike's Chalkbot campaign at the Tour de France. The campaign deployed what was basically a giant chalkjet printer attached to the back of a truck to promote cancer awareness, Lance Armstrong's Livestrong foundation, and itself (of course not necessarily in that order).

Image via.

Not long after the unveiling, a representative from the Institute for Applied Autonomy informed the nettime mailing list that Chalkbot bore a remarkable resemblance to the same's GraffitiWriter project.

Here is an excerpt:

Since 1998, the Institute for Applied Autonomy has been inventing and building robots to protest the militarization of robotics research and to reassert the public's ownership of public space. Among the machines we produced were GraffitiWriter, a small remote controlled robot capable of printing high-speed text graffiti on the pavement while driving...

In pointing out that the Nike Chalkbot is a higher-resolution/higher-budget but otherwise obvious descendent [sic] of the StreetWriter (SWX), we do not claim any sort of ownership over the project or the idea...we have long expected our anti-corporate project to one day be reappropriated as an advertising scheme...

I thought that the Near Future Laboratory put it well: "Something definitely happens when a concept dips into the world of corporate sponsorship -- it's authenticity and the trust behind the principles begins to dissipate quite rapidly. It becomes bland eyeball candy, is all."