TheMadPeacock On The Sofa

Do you suffer from the delusion of privacy? Is the American consumer (the king of all consumers) ready to sacrifice anonymity for personalized service?

Over on Seths Blog he has another great post titled The clowd. Seth is correct, what he describes is the future and a not to distant one at that but towards the end he hits on a cultural issue, perceived privacy.

5 years ago I was living in England, I did my shopping at Tesco, I used my Tesco card and they watched what I was purchasing. They would send me useful packs of vouchers for goods I use or might like (based on my shopping trends) and if I wanted to do online shopping (a fantastic service) their web site would give me the choice of starting with a replica of my last shopping basket, a streamlined view limited to all items I had ever purchased or, naturally, the entire product range.

Similarly, my mobile phone company would triangulate my position in the world to get info I asked for by looking at what cell towers I was using and how strong my signal was at each. Using that information they would send me traffic updates for local roads, hotels, nearest hospital or almost any other local info I wanted.

On arriving in the USA I was surprised that a similar level of personalized service was not available here.. After all the supermarkets here are tracking my purchases, AT&T knows where I am at all times (even before I got a GPS phone). My bank and credit card providers knows my spending and travel habits, how much i spend on transport, housing etc. and where I am when I do spend..

In discussions with people here in the USA, even young people involved in the computer industry, there appeared to be a high level of denial about just how much these companies know about us. The idea of personalized service based on data mining apparently felt intrusive.

So, the technology is ready, what Seth describes could probably be built today.. but are we ready as a culture? are we ready to let an electronic butler into our home, our minds, our lives?