You would think, would you not, that in this rapacious, technological age when so much about us is common knowledge through our debit card purchases, our emails, the websites we visit, and so on -- and given the fact that those whose interest lies in bending the consumers among us to their webby little corners where they may treat us with vain deceit to enmesh us in their capacious bag of hungry subscribers -- and further given the fact that they have clever, technological aides called 'algorithms' which catalogue and cleverly sort the evidence -- that they would address their advertising to those who could be guaranteed to need, or at least want, what they have to tempt us with? You would think so, wouldn't you?
It appears not. My computer screen is plagued - or should I say polluted -- with adverts every day of the week, and hardly a one of them accords in any way with what I need or even want. Take the current ad on my Hotmail home page today, for example, replete as it is with an engaging photograph of a:
Robot Coupe R5 V.V Cutter Mixed Single Phase
How could any algorithm possibly delude it's little brain into thinking I would need (or even want) such an item when I have no idea what the item even is? And the engaging photograph offers no elucidation to persuade me to think twice.
I think I must be out of step. I think I must be failing in my duty as a committed 21st century consumer. I think I must be terribly boring. How could I sit carelessly reading a few pages of Virginia Woolf instead of falling quietly into their web? I am duly disgraced.
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