Profiles

A huge SUV shown in a movie made 10 years ago looks like it could have come out of a General Motors factory yesterday.  On the other hand, technological gizmos handled by the actors appear positively antique.  Was that the case with the movies made in, say, 1955, and watched ten years later?  But I digress.

I've returned to watching movies on Netflix.  As before, I'd prefer seeing films with some artistic ambition, but either there aren't many of those available, or I don't know where to look, and the usual critic and audience favorites don't interest me much.   So I queue up adventure flicks, James Bonds, films where bad guys chase Harrison Ford, or he chases them, where Al Pacino or Robert DeNiro play gangsters, and similar fare.   I rate them all generously when asked at the end of each projection, and a Netflix algorithm immediately suggests others of similar kind. And I still keep looking.

That reminded me of what happens behind the scenes, so to speak.  Netflix, as well as shopping sites and all social media sites collect information about our choices and behaviour online and compose profiles of each and everyone of us.  These profiles serve their mercantile purposes, help them in making suggestions, and are sold to their advertisers who in turn make their suggestions to us.  Whether they are psychological profiles or strictly product oriented profiles, and whether they are shared and consequently "improved" by their compilers, I do not know.   I do know, am pretty certain that they are seldom if ever examined by human eyes, and only serve imperfect computer program algorithms.   In other words, for now we are safe.

But a psychological profile that doesn't focus strictly on product choices, but on what these choices say about the buyer would be of interest to government agencies and perhaps to insurance companies.   Who is the person who watches violent thrillers, spy dramas, detective stories, visits anarchist and religious websites, and orders rolls of duct tape online, a macro photo lens and a shortwave radio receiver?   What does my profiles or profile say or suggest about me that I don't know myself?  A word to the wise: be careful out there.