Oh What Prizes the Future Holds

So, after we've gotten to the point where "smart data" has run its course and I only get commercials for TV shows that my personal watching patterns suggest I might like, or I only get ads for products that I have a high probability to buy based on the things that I buy all the time already, what's next?

When all the companies who make money selling things [this is a tangent - selling things that most people don't need, probably can't afford and may not even want - because things you need, want and can afford generally don't need advertising at all], what will happen? When prices have remained the same, but marketing costs have gone down and all of the marketing dollars are spent not on the message, but on the audience selection process, what then?  When the marketing costs are low and yet the prices remain the same and the benefits of becoming part of the world of big data [profits] go into the hands of the very, very few, what then?

Is there a fear that we will be so cocooned, that we will only see things from people who think like we do, or who already know what we think?

And what about the "news", well, its not really news anymore, is it?  It's news feeds, where you can choose what you want to know about.  But the problem with choosing what you want to know about is that you don't know what you don't know, so you don't know what you're missing, even though I do know that the Ottawa Senators scored with 17 seconds to go in overtime last night.

Will I eventually stop paying for things on my charge card even though carrying around cash is such a risk and a bother, just to confuse the big data people into showing me new things?  Maybe I'll buy some tampons or some afro-syle cream just to get coupons from CVS for something I don't even know is there. 

Thanks to my voluntary compliance with the laws of big data, the whole selling-things universe knows I'm this age, that my kids are this age, where I shop, what I buy, the websites I look at, the friends I have and their ages and their kids ages and where they shop and the websites they look at.

Maybe then, after everyone I know is buying the same everything I buy, maybe then, someone will send me something about something new, just on a whim, or maybe because they misread the big data, and maybe then, my eyes will open from my commercialized slumber to a world of someone else's commercialized slumber.

Oh what prized the future holds.