I was fascinated by this portion of Minority Report. How far away are we from iris or retinal scanning, with advertisements specific to recent/favorite purchases on our credit cards?

Theoretically, we are just about there. You can buy email lists based on all sorts of criteria; cookies track our online browsing history. Many sites can do a capture of all sorts of information- it just depends upon how in depth you want to get.

Twitter, with its open structure, has startled me by allowing rapid and focused responses to what I had considered random comments. I would expect that if I made a remark about, say, Comcast or sex that it would either affect the quality of my followers, or cause follow up from the company in question. But should you expect a quip from a beer company if you mention a brand by name? If I speak about housework, should I expect to be sent links to cleaning products offered on Amazon?

It begs the question: Exactly how sanitized/generic does one have to make a conversation so that it will fly below the marketing arm of the twitter population? And IS sending someone a marketing link actually effective? Is anyone making enough money from this to justify the negative reactions of their followers, who will “vote with their feet”?

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