Creepy Corporate Data-Sucking Machines of the Future - io9 Comments

Creepy Corporate Data-Sucking Machines of the Future

Annalee Newitz — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:18:03 PDT

@noncornbatant: Yeah, and for a while there was even a real company that tried to get you to sell them your "clickstream." It was called Attention Trust. If only this website were fake: [attentiontrust.org]

Annalee Newitz

Creepy Corporate Data-Sucking Machines of the Future

corpore-metal — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:10:46 PDT

@noncornbatant:
Yeah, looking at that site, I can only think, "Ha, ha, only serious." With the amount of money and brain power being invested in this by the marketing weasels it will happen a lot sooner than 2024.

It's really sad how we've just resigned ourselves to this increasing intrusion of advertising into our lives. It was not so long ago in the 20th century where ads were rare in public spaces and now they are practically on everything.

It's not exactly a thrilling and dangerous SF dystopia but it's sad none the less.

corpore-metal

Creepy Corporate Data-Sucking Machines of the Future

noncornbatant — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:48:51 PDT

It'll probably come sooner than 2024. I bet profile fraud/profile defense will be a major problem/boon.

Of course in reality this is already going on, albeit the transaction is not monetary (at least in your direction): this is the business model of almost all "web 2.0" applications (Google is just the biggest and most obvious).

noncornbatant

Creepy Corporate Data-Sucking Machines of the Future

All_Thumbs — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 18:34:04 PDT

Great find, love the site. Immediately made me think ofrd of 'passive RPGs'. They basically are a way to sucker people into giving up all they do on the web for free. So yeah, not doing that, kthnxbai.

All_Thumbs

Creepy Corporate Data-Sucking Machines of the Future

Mister Adequate — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 16:40:23 PDT

I'd rather be able to sell my information than simply have it taken from me, so... I'd consider this a step up.

Mister Adequate

Creepy Corporate Data-Sucking Machines of the Future

dOk — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 15:30:46 PDT

Ok...
I want one of those handy-dandy disinformation generators.

Which I think our current president has already, although it seems to go on the blink all the time though.

dOk

Creepy Corporate Data-Sucking Machines of the Future

BloggyMcBlogBlog — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 14:54:53 PDT

Are we sure Google doesn't do this already?

BloggyMcBlogBlog