Do Whatever You Want – Because the Web Told You To…

• by Dan Bailey

The future is wide open – we’re moving toward an era unprecedented on the Web – scary and empowering at the same time… I just read an article about the status of learning behavior applied to Web technologies. Web sites are growing their abilities to serve specific advertising and content catered to the viewer’s interests – the Semantic Web. The article “Iome Plotstar platform learns customer behaviour” specifically discusses location-planning content served (http://www.marketingservicestalk.com/news/iom/iom100.html). In other words, if you’re planning online to go to a movie theater or club, the Web will serve you information, to your interests, about restaurants and shops near the event. It can serve you taxi cab information or nearby hotels. Next, it will enable you to automatically book online these associated services or reservations. The question we need to keep asking ourselves is how sites and browsers will share our personal interest information in order to aggregate and serve such tailored advertising…

So I ask you – do you feel scared or empowered?

P.S. For more reading on the future of the Semantic Web and personal security, please read my earlier blog post: http://jakeaull.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/semantic_web_ads_and_security/