Imagine an 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.
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http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rich-see-different-internet-than-the-poor