Robert Wright jumps the shark again

Wright can be very insightful at times. And, at other times, as in his book "The Evolution of God," he can be stubbornly obtuse.

He's not being quite that bad now, but, his column welcoming the greater invasion of online privacy that HTML5 supposedly will offer is close. Why does he want this? He says greater knowledge of consumers will help newspapers.

Boy, if you think that's all that's needed, you're fucking clueless.

That greater knowledge, except in certain high-rent areas of a small number of newspapers, won't drive up the value of online ads.

Wright halfway admits that himself:

Besides, the idea of a coherent demographic has broken down. Most people who read Slate’s content aren’t regular readers in the sense of going to its home page every day and perusing its table of contents. Lots of them are just link followers; they’re referred to specific Slate articles from, well, God knows where.

Links, RSS, etc.

The only possible way around all this would be if the AP formed its own search engine or something. And, no, the AP ain't that smart.