In an article featured on The New York Review of Books titled “Are We Puppets in a Wired World?” author Sue Halpern gives us a quick rundown of the internet’s relatively quick progression from a drab place “where business began and ended” to what we recognize it as today: a dynamic and creative environment that hosts millions of users. The internet has changed so much from its inception and even just from 5 years ago, which in turn has led to a change in the “norms” and perceptions surrounding acceptable internet uses and best practices. This is particularly true in the case of how businesses use available information on the web to purposefully target users and manipulate their ads to suit someone’s interests.
People are sharing more and more personal information on the web through social media such as Facebook and Twitter, online forums, blogs, and the like. This sharing is purposeful, even if people don’t consciously think about the possible long term effects that their “like” or status may have during the moment that they share them, because it is deliberate. But even when people don’t mean to, they are still sharing information through the online sites and stores that they browse, what they search on Google, etc. This information is easily available to companies who want to use these seemingly inconsequential details to get to “know” people in order to tailor ads to their preferences. Many would probably argue that there is really no way for technology to truly “know” someone based off of these data points because as humans and individuals, we are unpredictable and so much more. I would agree. However, does technology truly want to know us on such an intimate level? I don’t think so. Companies use algorithms in an attempt to calculate our next move because it is beneficial to them. They don’t need to see us as extremely unique individuals – by just looking at our online choices and making sense of this seemingly random data, they get all they need to predict our preferences, recommend movies/songs/friends, and even guess what we’re trying to look up on search engines. They might not always be correct, but I think they’re more accurate than some of us may be comfortable admitting.