When you turn it on, they know you turned it on. When you change channels or take a trip to the virtual shopping mall, they'll be following you. Find out what broadcasters are saying about interactive television. Hear their Orwellian plans to keep a file on every viewer, in every single home. Who buys the file? The highest bidder. What will they do with it? Figure out how to modify your behavior. What say do you have? None. Just as you have no idea what software is downloaded to your set top box. The applications are already written, many of them aimed at children. This might be the last generation to have privacy as we know it.

Spy TV catches the media execs out, tricking them into exposing their plans from their own mouths. That is why interactive television producers like Alan Lambert (see below) are fuming - this book describes the direct marketing techniques and artificial intelligence software they plan to use.

What really excites these men and women is the way interactive television will create experimental conditions in the home. Your TV set will be able to show you something, monitor how you respond, and then show you something else—repeating a cycle of stimulus, observation and response until they get the behavior they're after—whether it is buying corn flakes or voting in an election.

Spy TV serves as a compact guide to privacy and the "digital revolution" for anyone studying new media, and a wake up call to everyone else.

From the Publisher

Spy TV won the 1999 Winston Award from Privacy International for outstanding contribution to the cause of privacy. David Burke is the British Director of White Dot, the international campaign against television, and helped write "TV That Watches You: The Prying Eyes of Interactive Television", commissioned by the Center for Digital Democracy in Washington.

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3.3 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Time for people to wake up!, 15 Mar 2002

By A Customer

Fantastic book! Ant attempt at awakening the people to what the digital revolution is really about. Most people will dismiss this as paranoia and return to staring at a piece of furniture. A few will maybe start to question things, then things may change.
In conjunction with his other book "Get A Life" it is a great argument for eliminating television for good.
If more people stopped watching the lobotomy box and tried to started to interact with the real world maybe it would become a better place to live in. Naive? Maybe but without hope what do we have?

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1 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars conspiracy theory gone mad, 13 Jul 2001

By	alan.lambert@fish4.co.uk (london, UK) - See all my reviews

Paranoia disguised as intellectual reasoning. I do not recall ever having written 'rubbish' so often in the margin of any book I have ever read. This book implies that users are a bunch of dull-witted sheep that move slowly from one exploitative situation to another. Some of the privacy issues raised are obviously concerning but the reactionary way that this 'book' tries to deal with them makes sad reading. The only thing going for this book is that it is cheap although still a waste of money. This area of interactive TV has been better covered and better written about and any prospective readers had better be warned that this book is a turgid read at the best of times, and his chapter on Marketing, where an attempt at 'pop' psychology [mazlow's heirarchy of needs] is attempted, would be funny if you did'nt know he was serious. This is a topic that needs careful academic study , and any work should be subjected to the rigours of peer-review etc etc . This book seems to have been passed to a few friends for comment and then, because of the sexy nature of the interactive TV boom, published shamelessly. Save your money.

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0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A study of digital technology, 8 Mar 2000

By A Customer

This book studies the social implications that new digital technology might have and, rather unfairly I feel, follows an argument that powerful corporations will use this technology to exploit its customers for their own profit. Although well-written and an interesting examination of plausible consequences of new technology, it seems to portray another original conspiracy theory rather than a scholarly review of marketing which I had assumed the book to be about. It is more lobbying material over privacy issues, but does offer some food for thought.

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