Pizza Order - 2010

Yes, it is funny.

But on a more serious note, some things would or would not be likely to happen like that ... and some of that might be good while I guess most of it would be unwelcome.

The folks who made the piece are inviting us to think, and maybe trying to scare us a little. While it is funny, and we can laugh and move on, it is also an attempt to shape our opinion. In this sense it might be worth asking is this accurate? Likely? All bad?

It used to be that goods were bought and sold and services (e.g., delivery) and information (e.g., directory assistance) came along for free. Then our economy shifted to value and trade in services as much as goods, and the service sector grew and the service fee was born .. etc. Increasingly, information is bought and sold, and there is a growing information industry. For $20 bucks you can get quite a data rundown on someone.

Some of this is good. For example, I like it that my pharmacist is part of a network and can tell me about interactions of any of the drugs bought from any of the pharmacies in the network - even if I don't ask, or that I can ask a telecommunications company to access my records and match my patterns up with the plan most cost effective for me. And, if say I was going to hire a nanny or live-in housekeeper, I would gladly spend the $20 to get the data dump - or maybe even get them to do so before a final job offer is made. I like it when the coupons printed at the cash register are tailored to my purchase history.

Some of this is bad, like when you visit one Internet site to check drug prices and then get 300 emails spamming diet pills, viagra, and Rogane.

We currently have different priced insurance for smokers vs non-smokers, or drivers with clean records vs those with too many points on their license. We currently require some individuals with exceptional levels of risk (e.g., race car drivers, professional soldiers) to have insurance riders for the extra activities, or maybe the policies just exclude coverage for certain activities.

For the most part this is good because it keeps prices down for non-smokers who eschew extreme sports and war zones. But it is a legitimate question to ask how much is too much. If we tailor everything to each choice each individual makes, the process would strip the individual of privacy and dignity.

The pizza place would never collect a double-meat premium for the HMO, the pizza place may sell you patterns to a central information gatherer, and the HMO might buy information for fromthe central database help to set your rates. But, they could just give you a yearly physical, check your cholesterol, and adjust rates that way much more accurately.

And the key idea is that information is bought. The pizza place would never have access to purchase patterns and clothing sizes, because information is not free, and this is more true each day. They would have no reason to buy information about pants size or magazine subscriptions because this expense would not generate them any additional profit. So all the information shown in the clip would just never be assembled by most of the folks we interact with - although it could be assembled by some (e.g. loan officer, potential employer), and that is worth thinking about.

When a transaction occurs - whether it is pants, a book, condoms, or a pizza - it is an interesting question who owns the information. The buyer, the seller - or both. We are currently seeing laws that prohibit some business from sharing information with unrelated companies. Perhaps we will see purchases in the future where it is one price to do it in private, and a discounted price to do it if the seller gets to sell the information.

We currently have one price for a phone# and an additional charge for a private number. I can easily see paying extra for transaction confidentiality - or at least some sellers offering this confidentiality as a way to attract you business.

Very interesting stuff to think about.