Cookie Monster

The Adventures of Medical Man is featured in an ad on Roger Ebert's website! Or so I initially thought when I surfed my way over there recently. A few seconds later, I realized that I had come face to face with the digital mirror that is the modern Internet.

Although rogerebert.com is a good match for the movie-inspired genres I chose for Medical Man, the ad you see was not considerately placed there by a perceptive marketing mind at Amazon.com. Instead, it is a "for my eyes only" product placement mathematically determined by my web browser, specifically, by a little piece of code called a cookie.

You see, I had recently visited the Amazon page for Medical Man. A cookie told my web browser to remember that I had viewed the product. Days later, when I went to check Roger's opinion of Cloud Atlas, that same cookie must have instructed my browser to show me an ad for that same product I had viewed (but not purchased). The plan, I suppose, was to bring that product back to my attention supported by a connection to a popular movie critic's page. If I had been a consumer considering a book purchase, this reminder might have been the push I needed to commit to a purchase. Instead, as someone connected to the book, it became an eye-opening glimpse behind the curtain into the echo chamber of personalized advertising.

So, Mr. Ebert has likely never encountered The Adventures of Medical Man and will not be waving his thumb at it in any direction. At least we agree that Cloud Atlas was impressive.