Slashdot has a blurb up about how ISPs are selling their user’s online behaviour (their clicks and other data) for millions to companies who parse the data trying to figure out what you’re likely to do/buy next. My thoughts:
1. Companies will find that internet users are a bunch of freakin perverts. Just look at any list of the most searched for words/terms on the internet.
2. They’ll never get it right since there’s no right answer. The data miners may gain some insight and may see a minor breakthrough or two, but no matter how the data is sliced, diced or mashed, it’ll never reveal all it’s secrets.
These companies use math and analytics to try and predict what we want or what we will spend our next disposable dollar on. Math is an absolute science, with a few oddities to keep the geeks guessing. Look at Einstein’s E=MC2 and read the following quote from a plaque that hung on the wall of his office at Princeton:
“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”
Oh, the irony.
