The end of pleasant surprises?

THE FUTURE OF TECH: "The Next Net: Companies may soon know where customers are likely to be every minute of the day," by Stephen Baker, BusinessWeek, 9 March 2009.

Interesting article that recalls some of the futuristic notions of very direct advertising in the movie, "Minority Report."

But one cannot help but wonder how far this can really go without damaging our inherent hunter-gatherer impulses. If the net is going to anticipate every desire and push the products at you at all times, pretty soon your curiosity is going to atrophy.

Any new connectivity poses this danger, witness the lament in the animated movie "Cars" about interstates killing all the small towns--the end of discovery by driving. Instead, every X miles you are prompted to drink, eat, go to the bathroom, and gas up.

You can almost imagine a new class structure built around degrees of connectivity: those who see pervasive empowerment in it and those who see vast disempowerment in it--do-it-by-net versus do-it-yourself.

It'll be an interesting social evolution to track.

Comments

[Louis Heberlein]

Maybe someone should provide free customer 'try it out' samples to Al Quaida.