NP A little Privacy Rant (long)

[Doug Millison]

At 4:18 PM -0500 7/6/00, JEANNIE BERNIER wrote:
>  Mostly what
>corporations know about you is the stuff you tell them, and most ethical
>organizations have policies to prevent abuse of internal information.
>Caveat Emptor prevails as always.


Jeannie's description of the current state of affairs of what often 
passes for Internet marketing is, accurate. What's in the process of 
changing, as the result of the infrastructure (hardware, software) 
investments now underway, is that corporations gain the ability to 
integrate all this information, in real-time.  As network bandwidth 
capability increases to permit higher-quality images (video, music, 
etc.), and as more people hook up with the Internet and willingly 
enter into marketing programs in which they give companies detailed 
information about their lives and their desires, corporations gain 
unprecedented abilities to tailor their messages to individual 
customers, and to hit them with media experiences of unprecedented 
power.

Pirate's receipt of a pornographic illustration tailored to his 
sexual fantasies and designed to trigger the production of the 
element necessary to decode the message is Pynchon's extremely 
forward-looking artistic vision that fairly describes the state of 
affairs that will result from the investments that brand producer 
companies are now undertaking. It's only exaggerating a little bit to 
say this.  Through the use of TV alone, marketers already have the 
ability to press emotional buttons that move us in the most personal 
of ways; add to that the interactive, digital technology 
infrastructre now under construction, and voila.

I respect Jeannie's experience; I've got extensive experience in this 
arena, too. I took part in pioneering work four years ago at 
Broadvision Corp. (http://www.broadvision.com), which was the first 
to commercialize so-called 1:1 (one-to-one) technology. Prior to 
that, beginning in '93, I published and edited the world's first 
(yes, really) trade professional magazine for interactive media 
designers and developers, the community of folks who came out of 
personal computer software, videogames, computer-based learning, and 
Hollywood, to create interactive multimedia experiences, published 
then on CD-ROM, the same crowd that in '94-'95 began to move to the 
Web.  I've been directly involved with this evolving technology for a 
decade, at the level of helping designers and developers understand 
how to use the tools and infrastucture to design media experiences 
for consumers, and at the level, in my new book, of helping marketers 
understand how to deploy these experiences to create loyal customers. 
What I say in this regard is based on actual case experience and 
conversations with the individuals who are developing and deploying 
this technology.

I leave the privacy issue aside because privacy concerns are largely 
irrelevant in a world where individuals freely consent to programs in 
which they give increasingly intimate details about their lives to 
corporations in exchange for discounts and other benefits.   In this 
respect, corporations gain a level of power that even Pynchon may not 
have anticipated when he was writing GR -- in GR, individuals are 
born into social systems controlled by Them, unwittingly entrained by 
Their propaganda; now, we "opt-in" as enthusiastic participants of 
corporate marketing programs, numbed and deadened as we are by their 
increasingly sophisticated manipulations.

And, yes, as Paul points out, we do enjoy the material comforts and 
benefits of a consumer society. They feel great, until you (or me, at 
least) look at what they really cost, in terms of exploitation of 
those less than fortunate, of the environment, etc. Like the rest of 
you, I'm at the heart of this trend, too -- my for-hire work benefits 
the the very corporations whose strategies and tactics I deplore 
(and, unless you refuse to pay taxes and opt completely out of the 
economy, so do you).   But I'm using my insider knowledge of the 
Networked Economy to counter, within the limits of my feeble reach, 
the trend I've described here. I talk to people about this, a lot, 
and I'm drafting a proposal for a new book that will show activists 
how to use the infrastructure that corporations are currently 
building to force them to do the right thing.
-- 

d  o  u  g    m  i  l  l  i  s  o  n  <http://www.online-journalist.com>