Read Online Naked Consumer How Our Private Lives Become Public Commodities Erik Larson 9780140233032 Books

Product details Paperback 288 pages Publisher Penguin Books; Reprint edition edition (February 1, 1994) Language English ISBN-10 0140233032

Naked Consumer How Our Private Lives Become Public Commodities Erik Larson 9780140233032 Books Reviews

• THE NAKED CONSUMER
  
  Having just read “Dead Wake,” Erik Larson’s latest blockbuster, and having consumed each of his previous novels, I ran across his very first book, a nonfiction account of how companies spy on the consumer. I was curious as to how Larson would report on my least favorite social activity. He handled it with remarkable aplomb.
  
  Published in 1992, when Larson was a free-lancer living in Baltimore, it’s a book he claims to love, although apparently no one else did. It is not the booming hit his later novels have become, but I liked it and believe that the consumer, even more put upon now by sleazy marketing than when Larson wrote the book, would find it mesmerizing and should read it.
  
  Larson, in his clear and precise reporting, tells us how tax dollars have enabled marketers to find us, zero in on our secret wishes, and persuade us to buy things we don’t need. We are all on lists that help companies locate us, determine what we are patsies for, and how to make us empty our pocketbooks. The US Census, as have many other public agencies, although confidentiality is promised, has given immense amounts of information to companies that exist to sort through, quantify, and assemble data into lists that identify every person in our country by name, address, ethnicity, economic wealth, living condition, household makeup, religion, and any other characteristic that’s usable in determining vulnerability to marketing schemes...and to make a great deal of money doing so.
  
  This book is complex and mindboggling. To me it is also infuriating. I’m not some naïve dolt who thinks I exist in a vacuum, safe and secure in my cocoon of privacy. But Larson has opened my eyes to an irritating conspiracy that, while seemingly harmless, is a pervasive intrusion into privacy. Areas of my personal activity, the value of my home, credit limits on my charge cards, bank account balances, access to my passwords, PIN numbers and, perhaps my preference in underwear are all fair game to these scavengers, information I insist is none of their business.
  
  It never entered my mind that a little innocuous viewing window, the scanner at the checkout stand, could also pass on so much information about me. Combined with the frequent shopper card information I willingly passed out in exchange for gasoline savings, money bonuses, and premiums, it itemizes the commodities I purchase, screens, scores, analyzes the results, and digs deep into my existence. Huge corporations lust for this information.
  
  The information here is dated because of when it was written. I suspect that public infuriation at privacy invasion, manifest in the 1990s, is even greater now. Larson is urging us to recognize that privacy is indeed an inalienable right and that those charged with our protection must do so with dogged resolve.
  
  Schuyler T Wallace
  Author of TIN LIZARD TALES
• Great read for those that are so concerned about Facebook and google data mining.. This was written in the 90’s and is about how sears and others would use the census to sell products.. This started in the 1890’s.. The more things change the more they stay the same..
• Very old information. It's a history book at this point. Waste of money for anyone looking for up to date information.
• Although the information presented is pretty well documented at this point, it's still an engaging read. I would LOVE to see a new version published that takes into account for the advances in technology since the early 1990s. Email was not nearly as widespread as it is now, and spammers, banner ads and popups are surely in a league of their own when it comes to this type of research. I hope someone comes out with a new edition soon!
• Too dry compared to his other writings.
• Too technical
• A very good read.
• good history of development of customer research and profiling. Would be good to update this to include the last 20 years...the age of the social media revolution