Numerati

And now for something completely different...(Cleese)

No more satire on powder keg topics...this time.

There is a great book out there called "The Numerati." Almost as fascist as the Illuminati, they scour through the tons of digital flotsam and jetsam we leave behind in this information age, they profile us accordingly, and report their findings to grocery stores, web merchants, government agencies, and anyone else who's ready to pay a buck to acquire our personality DNA.

For instance, those frequent shopper rewards cards we get for "deals." Hogwash, it is a way fro them to entice us to spy on what we buy, what deals they can reel us in with, and to predict what products and advertisements we might get suckered in to. The Numerati are a statistical branch of technorati, and using algorithms that made Google the marketing monster it is, for whom we are all leaving footprints for every consumer driven money grubber out there, are categorizing us. So much for privacy (like posting a blog...errrr...)...

Anyway, the book is terrific! As an information science major, I could advertise that libraries don't do such shifty practices and the are the anti-consumerist/pro-privacy alternative to Borders and B&N. I could do this, and I could also say that we don't hound anybody to buy anything, and we don't see green with every body that comes inside. Phew...

Bottom line great book, scary but fascinating story. I'd love to see the algorithms, but there wasn't too much technical data, but enough for the casual reader.