Re: A Glaring Lack of the Obvious
- From: Kurt Busiek <kurt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 8 Dec 2007 18:45:36 -0800
On 2007-12-08 17:26:29 -0800, "Default User" <defaultuserbr@xxxxxxxxx> said:
Steve Coltrin wrote:
begin fnord
Robert Hutchinson <servoid@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
Steve Coltrin wrote:me >> a coupon for my brand of cat food - and I wasn't buying cat
The last time I used my credit card at Target, the machine printed
food then. >> Note the use of language - that was the *last time* I
used my credit >> card there.
Was it a popular brand? I see room for coincidence there.
Why, when I paid with credit before or cash after, did they never
give me coupons for dog food, or motor oil, or tampons, or something
else I don't buy?
The register coupon systems I've seen dispense them in response to your
current purchases. Like today, I got a $1.50 coupon for Kikkoman soy
sauce. I had purchased Hoisin.
It's possible that it happened as you say, but so what? The cards
gather all kinds of data on your purchasing. What's your objection,
that you saw them use it? That seems mighty silly, especially as it was
of benefit to you.
Certainly, when people live in small enough towns, the local merchants know them and may know their buying habits well enough to make suggestions -- Hey, Missus Jones, we've got canned peaches on special -- and somehow that isn't considered an evil invasion of privacy, maybe because the information is stored in a brain rather than a database. Even in a metropolitan are, there are shops small enough that they know me and my tastes when I come in -- the local comics store knows what sort of things I buy and what I might be interested in.
Me, I have no objection to my TiVo knowing what I like to watch, and Amazon making recommendations of stuff I might otherwise not know about, and if my grocery store wants to tailor coupons to things I actually buy instead of wasting paper like the Sunday newspaper's shopping section does, I have no complaint. The local Red Robin hamburger joint sends us coupons for a free meal on my family's various birthdays, and probably get more of our business as a result.
I do think, though, that people who see all this as an intrusion on their privacy should be able to opt out of it, at least, but I don't mind it myself. Marketing to my tastes and interests is okay by me.
It's funny -- back when I was a kid, it was science fiction to have a lot of the stuff being decried here today as bad. Instant electronic payments? Cashless transactions? They were nifty aspects of a "future society" when I read about 'em in stories, and I'm kind of enchanted by the fact that there are places now where I can buy a burger and a soda and wave a Visa keyfob at a reader to pay for it. I don't do it, because I don't have a Visa card (or the attendant keyfob), but it's still kinda cool technology. So I find it funny to see people griping about this sort of thing becoming reality of a science fiction board.
And I realize that just by saying this, I'm going to get responses from people who think I should hate this stuff, or who think I'm saying they should embrace it. No, honestly -- if you hate this stuff, I think you should be free to keep all the information private that you want to.
Me, I just look around occasionally -- like when I've downloaded from Amazon episodes of a TV show I missed, and then looked up an actor on it to see where I know them from, or had the GPS System in my car tell me how to drive somewhere I've never been -- and think this is getting to be a pretty cool future, technologically, in a lot of ways.
Bring on the cars that emit water vapor as exhaust, the portable library readers and the voice-activated computers!
No, wait, we have all those things, just at different levels of commercial viability, so far.
Okay, flying cars. I want flying cars next.
kdb
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