The "Intention" Economy

My fellow "Irregular",  Zoli was one of the first to break the news that AOL had posted gobs of web query details  for all to see.  While much has been written about the (lack of) attention economy, this and government attempts to get at Google's and other databases are really about getting to the "intention" economy - what's on people's minds.

My blog visitor stats will occasionally show up tantalizing queries like "Vendor a acquiring Vendor b" - they could be wild speculation, could be disinformation, could be insider information.  But what I get in traffic is a grain of sand in the beaches of data that Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, Technorati see. Can you imagine what can be mined from their databases? (If the SEC is reading this - for the record, none of the potential mergers in queries which came to my site have transpired even after months).

Maybe the Minority Report scenario will arrive way before 2054. We could have a "Department of Pre-Crime". And a "Bureau of Buying Intentions". And cryptographers assigned to break down disinformation. And with in-memory databases becoming more of a reality, many more of us could become Precogs.

Which is why I yawned when Zoli posted the AOL news. I knew it was coming all along -)