The Rich See a Different Internet Than the Poor Ninety-nine percent of us live on the wrong side of a one-way mirror By Michael Fertik <http://www.scientificamerican.com/author.cfm?id=4157> Imagine an Internet <http://www.scientificamerican.com/topic.cfm?id=internet> where unseen hands curate your entire experience. Where third parties predetermine the news, products and prices you see---even the people you meet. A world where you /think/ you are making choices, but in reality, your options are narrowed and refined until you are left with merely the illusion of control. This is not far from what is happening today. Thanks to technology that enables Google, Facebook and others to gather information about us and use it to tailor the user experience to our own personal tastes, habits and income, the Internet has become a different place for the rich and for the poor. Most of us have become unwitting actors in an unfolding drama about the tale of two Internets. There is yours and mine, theirs and ours. Here's how it works. Advertising currently drives the vast majority of the Internet industry by volume of revenue. Silicon Valley is excellent at founding and funding companies that give you free apps and then collect and sell your data when you use them. For most of the Internet's short history, the primary goal of this data collection was classic product marketing: for example, advertisers might want to show me Nikes and my wife Manolo Blahniks. But increasingly, data collection is leapfrogging well beyond strict advertising and enabling insurance, medical and other companies to benefit from analyzing your personal, highly detailed "Big Data" record without your knowledge. Based on this analysis, these companies then make decisions about you---including whether you are even worth marketing to at all. [...] Continua qui: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rich-see-different-internet...