In the age of information goods, consumer knowledge is essential and can give companies an edge over their competitors. Product differentiation, price discrimination or advertising personalization are just some of the reasons why online businesses seek to extract value from consumer data. Looking at the way consumer data is collected online, means have become much more sophisticated over the last 25 years.
During the ’90s, companies were looking at user queries and click streams to gain insights about consumers’ search behavior. In addition, personalized discounts or registration walls, e.g. for accessing free articles from online newspapers, provided a limited amount of demographic information (Shapiro and Varian, 1998). Today, analytics tools like Google Analytics or Hotjar visualize the click, movement and scrolling behavior of website users and analyze the conversation funnel of entire websites. In-built feedback polls or simple online surveys provide fast and inexpensive qualitative consumer data. Further, smart home devices like Google Home or Amazon Echo constantly listen to their environments, thereby collecting large amounts of personal data (which, however, is only used to improve the software, manufacturers claim).
These examples show the many possibilities of collecting and analyzing consumer data nowadays.
But what’s next?
A glimpse into the neurosciences industry can give us a foretaste of what might be possible in the future. The magic word is: Brain-machine interface. A brain-machine interface (BMI) is a device that allows the user to interact with computers solely through brain activity. Futurists envision to directly connect the human brain to computers to share data and increase brain performance, but also to create a flow from the outside world into our brain.
To date, research is still at an early stage and the first implants have been used mainly in medicine, for example to restore hearing or improve sight. However, a growing number of Silicon Valley companies such as BrainGate, Kernel or Neuralink, whose main investor Elon Musk invested $100m in 2018, are on the rise and have high goals. In an interview in July 2019, Musks described his intention to ultimately achieve a kind of symbiosis with AI, which would give humans the opportunity to keep up with AI (Chandler, 2019). Another well-known company in this field of research is Facebook. The social network announced in 2017 that the organization is working on a brain-typing technology that will allow people to post messages regardless of what they are doing at that moment (Corbyn, 2019).
Although still far away, the vision and the ultimate goal of these companies is clear: connecting users constantly to the Internet. This not only creates many opportunities for companies and individuals, but also raises a number of ethical and legal concerns. Once brain activity can be successfully decoded into brain data, companies like Facebook or Amazon will have access to unique personal data they could only dream of before. If we fail to control and protect our brain data in such a scenario, perfect price discrimination might be the consequence. In addition, desired products are being advertised to us and are at our fingertips or, more precisely, at our braintips at all times.
Sources:
– Shapiro, C., Varian, H. (1998) Pricing Information. In Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
– Chandler, S. (2019) Brain-Computer Interfaces And Mind Control Move One Step Closer To Becoming Reality. Forbes. Retrieved 25 September 2019, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonchandler/2019/09/24/brain-computer-interfaces-and-mind-control-move-one-step-closer-to-becoming-reality/#753aa96732fb
– Corbyn, Z. (2019) Are brain implants the future of thinking? The Guardian. Retrieved 25 September 2019, from https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/sep/22/brain-computer-interface-implants-neuralink-braingate-elon-musk
I would say this technology could completely disrupt the traditional way of how we browse the Internet and consume content. The bandwidth of Brain Computer Interface is significantly higher than finger input or speech, therefore new way to absorb information is created. Can our brain be overloaded with information abd whether there are safe ways of consuming data through BCI? I’m very curious!