They know your secrets. They watch your every move, though you cannot hope to catch them. They can sense your place in life, your hobbies, your relationship status, your interests, your recent activity, your future plans. You cannot escape their ever-present eyes.

“They” are programs created by companies to learn about us and tailor advertisements to each individual. And they tend to terrify us. When a pop-up or promotion seems a little too relevant to our lives, we tend to feel a little invaded, as if we’ve lost a privacy that we thought we had found in the massive cyberspace we call the Internet. Not only do we become a little unnerved by the idea of being watched, even if just by a computer, but we are uncomfortable with the idea that a non-human entity like this can come to understand us without our knowing or intentional acting.

But is this all bad? After recent discussions with various marketing professionals, I’ve come to find a certain humanity and beauty in the personalization of our advertisement experience. One mentioned that he saw such personalization as a way to cater to the needs and wants of each customer rather than forcing ads down their throats that have little to do with their lives. Instead, he offers them products and ideas that they may actually need.

Another explained that marketing as a whole is all about taking care of people and ensuring they are receiving good products. Since he works for an ecologically-focused company, he is especially concerned with how his marketing strategies create not only a better planet but a better life for his customers. He believes that people, by nature, care mostly about themselves, and so it is important that his marketing reaches them rather than throwing into the void some abstract rationale for buying into his message.

Both of these approaches are almost… human. They are all about getting to know people, avoiding domineering over them in distant ways, creating a closer community, and even caring for their needs. These are all beautiful qualities in human society- we want to watch out for each other as individuals.

But this humanness may be just what leaves us in fear of such developments. When our personalities and needs can be deciphered by algorithms, we start to wonder about our own complexities and about how far we should let machines in. We are also a little afraid because some company is behind that machine capitalizing upon our individuality. And these corporate entities now own an ever-growing quantity of information about us- how much are we willing to let them know? At what point does caring for the individual turn into control?

Then again, new tech will always be a little scary. Where do we draw the line between fear of change and a more rational fear of technology going too far? What is the place of personalized marketing? Tech is becoming more human- will we let our walls down and let it into our very hearts?