I don't get it; I have difficult even spelling Britney Spears let alone recalling any of her songs, but somehow that doesn't seem to prevent her name being a recurring search topic across 70% of monitored countries in the Google Zeitgeist.

But the Zeitgeist analysis is peanuts to what Nova Spivack wants to achieve. In his Physics of Ideas (yes another changethis manifesto; some very good reading matter here folks), Spivak proposes to examine memes (and their movement and velocity) in the same way as we analyse particles. He believes a deeper analysis of web and RSS content will reveal how "big ideas" are transmitted, stored and how they change in importance. Very interesting, but how could that information be used? Spivak suggests that it may be possible to correlate meme size and velocity with other sources of information such as stock price or demographics to help with stock purchases, market research, electioneering, even terrorist activity.

It's interesting to think about that "public" data being correlated with "private" data like regional product sales or telephone calls or house prices or weather patterns. Clearly a firm that could offer this kind of data and (more importantly) analysis is in a position to charge more than say Google charges today for targetted advertising. Taking this technology to its logical conclusion, it may be possible to track a meme back to it's origin (person, place or technology). Knowing the origin makes it possible to identify and either punish or reward the people or the mechanisms that are the sources of certain kinds of meme.

So continuing on the slightly 1984-ish theme of my entries for today, this means that the folks who play their parts in framing or starting or a trend - the little firestarters - those folks can look forward to micro-payments for pushing brands or propoganda, while the real data mines and miners (Google and such) can be assured of an even larger role in tomorrow's society.

In the movie Minority Report, Tom Cruise escapes retinal detection by having his eyes replaced. But advertisers may not have to go so far as to use retinal scanners - your future smart phone will give them far more information than even the spyware on most desktops that run Internet Explorer.

El Reg comments on a New Scientist article The phone that knows your next move about a smartphone in development that will learn your habits by observing who you phone or data-connect, where you do it (location-based awareness) and when.

This may sound like something you may have a choice about, but if you had to pay 3 times as much for a telephone contract with a dumb phone (a large unlovely specimen, the kind you wouldn't be seen dead with), you might just have to take the smartphone which knows more about your social life than you do.

It's funny - back in 1978, a fairly intelligent but low-budget BBC sci-fi series Blake's Seven shocked my teen sensibilities with it's depiction of a tranquilised society watched over by cameras in all public spaces. Today I can't seem to get angry about that anymore, that makes me wonder what we'll accept tomorrow. Prozac anyone?