We don't spy - Don't even try

If we could know everything about everybody every second of every day.

Within the marketing world (and certain governments) there is the persistent myth that if we could just know everything about everybody every second of every day then we could target just the perfect item that you would want to buy right to your desktop or smart device, instantly.

Truth, but not very much.

There is some truth to that, but not very much. The best they can do today is to show you a picture of what you were looking at yesterday, something you have already purchased, or more likely didn't even want. (If you see an advertisement with an attractive 20 something in their underwear, don't click on it. If you do, for weeks, you will have people in their underwear dancing around all over your computer monitor.) In big government data surveillance projects the best they have done is to show, after the fact, the data that they did collect that was missed or ignored until after some catastrophe had already occurred.

The myth continues.