I went to watch Minority Report last night and one particular point of interest in the film scared the pants off me.

Eye recognition marketing! Now it may seem nuts but eye recognition is already an established technology, ATM's being the most likely take-up. Mix that with the current company buzz for trying to personalise the marketing towards individuals in an attempt to create "relationships" and therefore create better loyalty and greater sales - well then it doesn't seem too far away.

Now I don't mind receiving the odd letter from a company I already use letting me know about an offer, but couldn't you just see them all hurtling towards such uses of technology? And I placed myself in that kind of situation and my only thoughts were that I'd run as fast as I could with my eyes closed out of the the shopping mall.

Sort of harks back to an old discussion on has technology gone to far, well more to the point how far can it go? and will end-up causing more harm than good?

Robert excellent observations. if technology has gone too far then "customer surveillance" is the buzz word I can think of right now. Shadow the customer get into his mind, body, soul and what not. In Indian scriptures there is a mention of a technique where a person can enter the body of the other and influense his behaviour. Probably these active marketeers may use this technique later ... it is not relationship building but a case of "Psychotic selling" that is the marketer driven to phobic levels of losing customers and trying to influence customer behavior. Hipnotists may be called next .. "WATCH OUT THE BIG MARKETEER IS WATCHING YOU".......true Orwellian experience and Toffler's Future SHOCK???

Vedula

If we want to talk about scary technology......

What about the company who is marketing new mobile phone technology that is so small it is implanted as a filling in a tooth. The user can hear voices in their head as it resonates voice sound via bones.

Worrying or what, can you imagine being in shop and hearing a Buy Buy Buy voice in your head, you would cease to know what was real or implanted.

There are a series of books by Frederick Pohl call Merchanters War or something similar. Anyway 1 character returns to earth and is wandering down a crowded street when there is a blank area of pavement with markings on it. He walks through and recieves a psychic blast (supperliminal adverts) for a soft drink, he then gets an uncontrolable desire for the product and has to go to a deprogrammer to get rid of it...
scared the life out of me.