iSpy: Chapters 1 and 2

In our class discussions since the beginning, we have gotten onto the topic of advertising many times. For instance, the issue where Shane was shopping for shoes and when he went back to facebook the ad for the shoes he was looking at was right on his facebook page. This is something that we debated many times, whether the internet should follow you around.

The part of the reading in iSpy that made me think of this topic was were Andrejevic mentions "contextual advertising". His example was the way google equip the entire city of San Fransisco with free wireless internet. Since google could track where the wireless internet was being used, they would then place location specific ads, severely tight ones for that matter. The example that Andrejevic used was imagine you are working on your laptop in a park during lunch time, then you could find ads such as discounts at a sandwich shop that happens to be right across the street.

This location specific advertising and also the email messages sent over gmail, google can keep track of a lot of things you say, do, and enjoy. So it is not very difficult to imagine how "contextual" the advertising it does may become. Andrejevic describes this idea in his book as a digital enclosure, which he defines as "the creation of an interactive realm wherein every action and transaction generates information about itself."

It seems to me as a scary thought, that every single move we make on the internet has the possibility to be tracked and recorded. Andrejevic talks about the list of things that internet browsers collect from our usage on a daily basis and it seems rather scary. I wonder why they have the right to follow our wants and needs so closely. Doesn't it seem like an invasion of privacy? And that ties back into the initial paragraph and discussion we have had a countless number of times...is the idea of follow our internet history and in turn advertising it on our facebook page a invasion of our privacy?