On Mon, 4 Feb 2002, Nick Arnett wrote: > > I hope and expect that the influence of advertising and mass media will be > diminished by development of automated ways to identify influential people. > For most people today, there are very few opinion leaders on subjects of > national and world importance. But I'm sure the Internet is already > changing that.
In my cycicism I would expect advertisers and lobbyists to try to use such technology to identify and suborn, er, pay-to-shill, influential people. Then we'd want to develop software designed to detect those who have been "turned" based on patterns of conversation.... Marvin Long Austin, Texas
