Whose Media is it Anyway?

I recently listened to a podcast interview with Joseph Turow on NPR’s Fresh Air. Turow is the author of a book called The Daily You:How the New Advertising Industry is Defining Your Identity and Your Worth, and is a description of the data tracking and mining that is in play in the online world. Much of what is discussed in the interview is nothing new for anyone paying the least bit of attention to what you do online. But what I found really compelling is the long view that his research elicits. Namely, that what we are experiencing now is the infancy of advertising in the online world. What we can expect if current practices get the chance to grow up is a redefinition of privacy. He begins to suggest that the greater concern is no what a company or companies know about you, but rather what they do with what they infer from what they know about you.

In the future, Turow says, you might be placed into "reputation silos" by advertisers, who will then market products to you accordingly.

"It has a lot of ramifications of how we see ourselves and how we see other people," he says. "... And this is part of another issue we have to think about, which is information respect. Companies that don't respect our information and where it comes from are not respecting us, and I think moving into this new world, we have to have a situation where human beings define their own ability to be themselves."

It sort of makes sense doesn’t it? Its kind of an expansion on the advertising signs you see up and down E. Lake St. compared with what you see on W. Lake St. in Uptown. Turow describes this as social discrimination. Essentially, those advertisers are holding up a mirror, which is more akin to a projector screen behind which we know very little about, and at this point don’t much care.

I find it disheartening as I attempt to increase my use of Social Media to further my cause, because my connections have a shadow corporate life over which I have virtually no control.