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Politics Is the Art of Persuading

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In order to persuade people you need to know what they are interested in. Politics and marketing are very close relatives. A new company is measuring eyeball movement across web pages in an effort to see what interests you and what doesn't. This has been done since the 1970s, but now it's a lot easier. They even have neat heatmaps of what's hot and what's not. I don't know about you, but this has "freaky" written all over it.

I don't really want people watching my eyeballs, if you don't mind. I like them doing what I want them to do in the privacy of my own head. Still, as the barriers between man and machine blur, marketers (and politicians) are going to get better and better at "programming" people. I guess that's better than them actually moving your eyeballs for you, which is probably 50 years or more away.

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This page contains a single entry by DanielBMarkham published on July 4, 2005 5:51 PM.

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