Devices and Internet Services That Read Your Mind

There are increasing numbers of new devices that can collect telltales about your mental state. George Orwell's 1984 may have been an underestimate of the amount of state control of people that may soon be possible.

Your television could soon be watching and listening to you in order to deliver a more personalized experience, and of course a more personalized series of advertisements.


New DVR will use camera and microphone to target advertisements based on recordings of users
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/dvr-camera-microphone-target-advertisements-based-recordings-users-014434311.html

This isn't news, as Google filed its patent back in 2007.
Google TV Might Watch You, According to Patent
http://gizmodo.com/277162/google-tv-might-watch-you-according-to-patent

But companies and governments will be able to go further than just watching and listening to you. Through implantable devices, they will record heart rate, blood pressure, and other chemical signals inside your body. Already Medtronic refuses to share this data with the people who have the devices implanted within them, even though it is their bodies that are the authors of the information stream being collected by the Medtronic device.

Who Owns Your Health Data?
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/12/03/144245/who-owns-your-health-data


Heart Gadgets Test Privacy-Law Limits
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970203937004578078820874744076-lMyQjAxMTAyMDMwMDEzNDAyWj.html?mod=wsj_valettop_email#project%3DHEARTDATA%26articleTabs%3Darticle

Wearable devices about the size of a standard company ID badge have already been created, tested, and verified in operation. Although the headline purpose is increasing the happiness of employees, you can imagine where else the technology might go.


Can happiness in the enterprise be engineered?
http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/bulletin/can-happiness-in-the-enterprise-be-engineered/7163?tag=nl.e660&s_cid=e660&goback=.gde_138801_member_192315721

The deeper and more technical article on wearable "happiness measurement" badges is at the IEEE site:

Can Technology Make You Happy?
http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/innovation/can-technology-make-you-happy

But even if you aren't implanted or badged, there are ways to pick up cues about your mental state. Facebook has dedicated itself to "trying to help users map out all the things they care about and all the things they’re connected to, and to help people discover things through the lens of their friends":

How Facebook’s Top Engineer Is Trying to Read Your Mind
http://www.wired.com/business/2012/11/mike-vernal-facebook/

Current Web Tracking Trends, Cyberweapons, Espionage

Advertisers are no longer selling bulk clicks or groups of consumers. They are collecting individual users of web sites, and selling each user on that user's particular visit to a web site. The user is automatically auctioned off to the highest bidder by robot software. The number of tracking companies is growing dramatically, and each web site visit may result in sending user browsing data to 50 to 100 different vendors of advertising based on tracking.

Online Tracking Ramps Up
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303836404577472491637833420.html

Behavioral data tracking rising dramatically
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57456273-83/behavioral-data-tracking-rising-dramatically-q-a/

Facebook said to be launching platform for real-time ad bidding
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57452712-93/facebook-said-to-be-launching-platform-for-real-time-ad-bidding/

Activist coders aim to deafen Phorm with white noise
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/16/antiphormlite/

Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

U.S., Israel developed Flame computer virus to slow Iranian nuclear efforts, officials say
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-israel-developed-computer-virus-to-slow-iranian-nuclear-efforts-officials-say/2012/06/19/gJQA6xBPoV_story.html

Cyberweapons: Bold steps in a digital darkness?
http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/cyberweapons-bold-steps-digital-darkness

India's Internet Threat
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htterr/articles/20120616.aspx

NSA Claims It Would Violate Americans' Privacy To Say How Many of Us It Spied On
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/06/19/194216/nsa-claims-it-would-violate-americans-privacy-to-say-how-many-of-us-it-spied-on

Don't Get Bubbled!

Some, or perhaps nearly all, search engines narrow your results based on what they think you will be interested in. But this leads to a problem:  You may miss out on new things because the search engine has filtered them out of your results. Instead of helping you find things you want to know, the search engine's filtering system has thrust you down some path based on your earliest inquiries, stranding you in a part of the information forest that looks inviting but omits the surprises you really do want to see.

In other words, using Google, Yahoo, or Bing forces you to have a blind spot in your thinking and searching.

For more, see http://dontbubble.us/

The search engine DuckDuckGo solves this problem by not slanting your results through the storage of past searches. In my short (very short) tests while writing this entry I was very pleasantly surprised. Unlike Cuil, the supposed "wonder search engine" that produced amazingly bad results after a while, DuckDuckGo is pretty, produces Google-quality (or Bing-quality if that's the way you roll) results, and had some very cool extra features.

Five stars.

Stalker App Combines Foursquare, Facebook, Google Maps

The Russians have made the perfect app for stalkers, says a Forbes contributor Roger Kay:
"What Girls Around Me Says About Us"

All you need is an iphone, an itunes account, and some testosterone. Bang! You're in the reproduction business.