Numerati

The Introduction to the Numerati immediately reminded me of an NPR segment I heard earlier in the week on my drive home from work: Tools To Help You Hide Online Raise The Ire Of Advertisers.  The story talks about Mozilla and other browsers' efforts to improve cookie-blocking.  Cookies are little bits of code that get planted by websites on our browsing devices that let others track our online activity.  Online marketers use this data to make decisions about where and when to place ads that are specifically selected based on our recent browsing history.

I am sure this effort to make improve internet privacy has online marketers a bit worried.  They have spent years fine tuning their algorithms and statistical techniques and have learned a lot about our online buying tendencies.  I don't think the online advertising industry was too pleased with a few of the headlines over the past few weeks:

Barack Obama seeks to soothe relations with EU over NSA spying

Lawmaker 'disappointed' with Google's response on Glass privacy

FBI drone use renews privacy concerns

The more concerned people get about their privacy in general, the more likely in my mind that there will be a greater push for online privacy in the future.