Blabble - Thought Parsing

Blabble - Thought Parsing

Well, I'm not sure how to feel about this concept. On the one hand it's incredibly seductive. On the other hand, it creeps me out a little to think of a machine at the beck and call of a marketting department reading everything I post. The phrase came up as a a Buzzword of the Day entry this week. It was defined like this:

thought parsing: To filter online
blogs in a manner that allows you
to see what others are thinking
(or at least writing).

The example using the movies on Blabble's home page intrigues me because it does give some democratic power over what types of movies are released to the market. I've always thought Hollywood was out of touch... if they pay attention to this kind of research, then maybe we'll get better movies? A guy can dream right?

This reminds me of the old Max Headroom TV show where the people at the networks had instant access to a show's ratings... like if an actor used a word that people objected to, you could see your ratings dip seconds after he/she had said it. Or if a news story was particularly interesting, your ratings would spike immediately. It has all the makings of a tantalizingly sinister conspiracy.