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If Amazon can already study your history, predict your purchases and ship them before you even place an order – the online retailer’s “anticipatory shipping” technique – imagine what predictions other data-heavy companies could make.

For example, in a year or two, Google will be present in your car (thanks to its self-driving vehicles but also to the Android operating system that powers other models); in your bedroom (thanks to its acquisition of Nest, which manufactures smart thermostats and smoke detectors); in your pocket (through Android-powered smartphones); and in your entire visual field (via Google Glass, the wearable camera and screen).

In knowing your routes, your daily patterns and your contacts, Google has a far better picture of risk – for example, the odds that you will have an accident or default on a mortgage – than any insurance company or bank. And, in having unmediated access to you via your phone, Google can also sell you insurance or make you an offer for your personal data on the go, using a price point that you are most likely to accept.

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OVER the next decade, approximately five billion people will become connected to the Internet. The biggest increases will be in societies that, according to the human rights group Freedom House, are severely censored: places where clicking on an objectionable article can get your entire extended family thrown in prison, or worse.

The details aren’t pretty. In Russia, the government has blocked tens of thousands of dissident sites; at times, all WordPress blogs and Russian Wikipedia have been blocked. In Vietnam, a new law called Decree 72 makes it illegal to digitally distribute content that opposes the government, or even to share news stories on social media. And in Pakistan, sites that were available only two years ago — like Tumblr, Wikipedia and YouTube — are increasingly replaced by unconvincing messages to “Surf Safely.”

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While quizzes are also not new — Slate, for instance, previously offered the Carlos Danger name generator, a reference to the supposed pseudonym used by Anthony Weiner — the trend toward interactivity is only accelerating. Time magazine hired its first digital interactive graphics editor last August. BuzzFeed, the up-and-coming digital news site, installed a quiz template in its system in 2012. The Wire, part of Atlantic Media, has introduced a custom-made bracket competition to coincide with March Madness, the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament, where users vote to narrow the field in categories like the best college, the best city, the best seat in a movie theater.

The problem for media organizations is where, if anywhere, to draw the line between amusing content and the mission of reporting the news. Many digital publications have relied on addictively shared content of dubious news value — like quizzes to determine which character of the Downton Abbey television series the user most resembles.

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For many people, the alt weekly as a genre is already passé, rendered irrelevant by the rise of the Internet.

But an alt weekly is connected to a city in the way that a website can never be. In Baltimore, somewhere between 20 and 40 percent of the population doesn’t have regular Internet access. The glib techno-utopians who not only foresee a paperless tomorrow, but also lobby for a paperless present, are ready to forget about these people. Alt weeklies might not always reach everyone in the city, but at least, like the dailies, they try to be available and relevant to everyone.

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“From its low-key offices near the center of the city, Rocket Internet has turned the usual business model for technology companies on its head, compiling a team of high-flying finance and management specialists and arming them with the money they need to mimic already successful Internet companies — applying these proven ideas in other countries, often in emerging markets.”

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“In 2011, officials at the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department moved to block AT&T’s proposed $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile. That kept the struggling, fourth-place carrier alive as an independent firm. And it led John J. Legere, T-Mobile’s flamboyant, foul-mouthed chief executive, to brand his company the “uncarrier,” and inaugurate a string of measures that have turned every accepted practice in the mobile business on its head. T-Mobile’s resurgence, and the effect it has had on the larger market for cellular service, may hold important lessons for regulators who will soon sit in judgment over the latest enormous broadband proposal, Comcast’s deal to gobble up Time Warner Cable.”

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“Over at Snapchat, Mr. Spiegel, who is 23, apparently thought $3 billion was not enough for a company that, as yet, does not turn a dime of profit. But here’s another question: When is your number big enough? The most expensive homes in the Bay Area top out at around $30 million. Pick up a few fancy cars at $100,000 a pop. Throw in a Bentley for $175,000, a weekend place in Sonoma for $5 million, a modest pied-à-terre in Manhattan for around $5 million — fine, make it $10 million. And a top-of-the-line private jet for around $50 million. With expenses, taxes and what not, you’re barely past $100 million.”

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Data brokers organize and sell that information to retailers, lenders and other businesses that pitch their products to people grouped in categories like “rural and barely making it” and “ethnic second-city strugglers.”

Some of the information is highly personal, if clearly irrelevant to any marketing campaign. A Chicago-area man recently received a marketing offer from OfficeMax that included the line “Daughter Killed in Car Crash” between his name and address, a reference to an accident that took place a year earlier. The company says that the phrase was included in error, but it offers a clue into the kind of data being collected.

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Only a few hours had passed after the $45 billion merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable was announced last week when an early voice emerged endorsing the giant deal.

“Win-win situation for American businesses,” said the statement from the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

It was the start of what Comcast executives acknowledge will be a carefully orchestrated campaign, as the company will seek hundreds of such expressions of support for the deal — from members of Congress, state officials and leaders of nonprofit and minority-led groups — as it tries to nudge federal authorities to approve the merger.

But what the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce did not mention in its statement praising the transaction was that it had collected at least $320,000 over the last five years from Comcast’s charitable foundation, which is run in part by David L. Cohen, the Comcast executive who oversees the corporation’s government affairs operations.

It is a hint, critics say, of just how sophisticated Comcast’s lobbying machine is, an enterprise that, like the company itself, reaches across the United States and has more than 100 registered lobbyists in Washington alone.

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The tragedy is that the technology industry is not a meritocracy. Making great products is often not sufficient for success, and sometimes it’s not even required. In tech, marketing, branding, partnerships and timing can be as important as how well your product works.

What’s more, how a company’s product works is largely dependent on the company’s position in the market. Microsoft and Nokia’s consumer businesses are governed by the vicious rules of network effects — the economic idea that products get better as more people use them. The more people who use a particular operating system, the more likely an app developer is to build for that system. And the more apps that are developed, the more the operating system appeals to consumers. The cycle builds on itself.

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