The Internet - Too Clever by Half

Online, I find I'm becoming increasingly irritated at being given what someone thinks I want, rather than what I'm asking for. Now I admit there's a lot to be said for location-based services (see What LBS Can Do for You) when I want to find out what's on offer where I happen to be. And there's also something to be said for targeted advertising, when it's based on the page content. But, both of these developments have a more disturbing side.

As an example, take my attempts to research a variety of services available in the US while I'm in the UK. I type in the name of a 'service', and every result comes back from a co.uk site. So, I now type in 'service com'. Every result comes back from a co.uk site. Yes, there are ways round this, at least on the cannier search engines, but there are large, important sites that have different versions of themselves for different countries and which refuse, point blank, to let you go anywhere but where you are. You change the address from co.uk to com, and co.uk comes straight back at you. I want to see what it looks like from America. I want to learn what's on sale in Russia. What have they done to this once wonderful research facility? What happened to global marketing?

Then there's the targeted ads. Somewhere along the line, some sneaky bit of technology twigged on to the fact that I'm a writer. Aha! Now wherever I go, I'm greeted with the same ad asking me, 'Do you want to get published?' No! Much of the rest of the repetitive fare I'm served up is equally unappetising. Just because I once investigated pet food, doesn't mean I'm running Battersea Dogs' Home. I don't have a pet, and I don't eat that stuff myself.

The most entertaining of these ads are those that pretend to target me by flashing my city's name in gaudily animated neon banners. '$5 All-You-Can-Eat buffets in Sheffield.' Last time I checked, we're still using the good old Great British Pound up here in the frozen north, unless there's been some coup d'état I've missed. Come to think of it, that could be the case. Maybe I'm getting Targeted News, and they think politics isn't my thing.

It's funny, it's frustrating, but it's also a bit frightening. What once was part of globalisation is now closing in, putting up new barriers, clustering people into tiny, incestuous interest groups, convincing them that the rest of the world looks just like their little world, reinforcing their behaviour, regardless of what that might be.

The money men are steering the handcart, and guess where we're going?