Your monetized second life

On FORA.tv there is a round table on some exciting efforts to bring "smarter TV" to the masses. One of the participants works for a company which offers its customers the opportunity to point a remote at, say, the watch worn by a celebrity actor and buy it on the spur of the moment. He explains that this is part of an overall project aimed at monetizing all sorts of emotional communities of people - fans of this and that. It's curious how many companies build their business plans on inducing customers to buy impulsively and incessantly, for themselves or nagged by their kids. Some sullen conservatives still think, though, that decorum and self-restraint in modern society are undermined primarily by a few feminists and other liberal intellectuals. Of course, they reject all conspiracy theories as hopelessly naïve.