Philip Dick Novel Marketed on Facebook With Surveillance Technology Straight Out of a Philip Dick Novel

I was checking my Facebook yesterday, when an ad for a new illustrated edition of Philip K. Dick's classic Man in the High Castle scrolled across my screen:

Seeing as Castle is one of my favorite novels of all time, I'm actually a perfect person to see this ad. Facebook knows this because it scans my behavior and connects me to advertisers looking for people just like me -- a potentially creepy technology that would, ironically, be right at home in a Philip Dick novel.

To be sure, knowing how Facebook ads actually work, the reality is a lot less sinister:

Facebook simply categorizes users' explicit, opt-in activity on Facebook, and enables advertisers to target users based on the particular activity they desire. So in this case, the publishers of this new PKD novel were probably trying to reach people who Liked the Philip K. Dick page on Facebook, and/or selected Man in the High Castle as a favorite book in their user profile -- both of which I've done. That way, this publisher only shows their ad to people who are most likely to find it relevant, and as a consumer, I get an advertisement for a product that I'm genuinely interested in possibly buying. So it's really not a case of scary corporate surveillance, but a system where everyone benefits.

(Then again, in a Philip K. Dick novel, there's usually a corporate stooge trying to assure everyone that they're not being targeted by scary corporate surveillance, and that they're just part of a system where everyone benefits.)

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[UCMO]

Have you seen the pilot adaptation on Amazon Instant Video of "The Man in the High Castle"? Great production values, and I believe it was picked up for series order.