EightBlack.

Holy Shit!

That’s what I said to myself after I put down the page on John Batelle’s book.

I read the page again.

And then again.

“The Database of Intentions is simply this: The aggregate results of every search ever entered, every result list ever tendered, and every path taken as a result. It lives in many places, but three or four places in particular hold a massive amount of this data (ie MSN, Google, and Yahoo). This information represents, in aggregate form, a place holder for the intentions of humankind - a massive database of desires, needs, wants, and likes that can be discovered, supoenaed, archived, tracked, and exploited to all sorts of ends. Such a beast has never before existed in the history of culture, but is almost guaranteed to grow exponentially from this day forward. This artifact can tell us extraordinary things about who we are and what we want as a culture. And it has the potential to be abused in equally extraordinary fashion.”

If you’re a marketer (or a government) then the database of intentions could very well be the most important discovery of modern times.

Because now it’s acknowledged as real. Now it exists. And now it has a life of its own. It evolves every second.

Lets go back a step before you go completely nuts. Or you start to hyper ventilate on me.

Think back to when you first started using a search engine.

Think back to when you first saw that Google search box.

You probably can’t. No matter.

You probably can’t even remember what you searched for last week.

But Google can. So can Yahoo. Even Bill Gates knows what you did last summer.

Every search, every desire, every want is stored somewhere. The data exists to be manipulated, massaged and moulded into something more powerful than any commercial grade CRM application. Ever. Period.

This is not my idea. Full credit must go to John Battelle.

This book however is my thinking, my conversation on something that has intrigued me since I first fell upon the subject.

I hope my thoughts and conversation with you over the next few hundred pages does the concept that Battelle came up with solid justice.

More importantly, if after reading all or some of The Database of Intentions and you like awake at night, staring at the ceiling and no amount of thinking about Jessica Alba or Hugh Jackman (ok, this works for me and my wife respectively) will put you to sleep – then I have achieved much.

Because this should keep you awake.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 26th, 2006 at 2:36 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.