Yesterday, with the sun shining outside the office window, a reporter with this newspaper, during a rare idle moment, scanned through the barbecue accessories available on Amazon. co.uk. Having selected a few items and then gone to the checkout, the idea of purchasing the items became less attractive when the website displayed the post and packaging fees. The reporter then closed the internet explorer page and went back to work.
Within minutes he was working on a story to do with increasing global urbanisation, and thought it might be good to include the size of the world’s population. (7.2 billion, and rising.) Having googled world population clock, the reporter selected one and up it came. While the site was loading the number, up popped an advert for Amazon suggesting the purchase of the very accessories that were still lying abandoned in the virtual checkout.
Either you think this is ingenious and useful, or you think it is bullying and annoying, but there is no getting around the fact that the internet and firms driving much of how it works, are profoundly altering how we think about privacy.
What you buy, what you search for and who you contact are now not just monitored but bundled into valuable information. Computer-generated emails suggest who you should bother befriending. You can't watch a movie on Netflix without the thing suggesting what you watch next, or that you recommend the movie you've just watched to a friend. And as for mobile phone companies tracking their users . . .
Most likely the trend will just continue, and the idea of privacy in the future will be a narrower, almost quaint, conception.
On the other hand, the intrusion might create a tipping point. And people might yet push back, with the idea of doing so suddenly going massively viral. The trouble with that notion, though, is how do you organise a social media campaign against the use of social media?
