The indefatigable Al Norman of Sprawl Busters, just brought to my attention this latest reason to resist the lure of Facebook.

Through Sprawl Busters and its  network of sympathizers, Mr. Norman, of Northfield, Massachusetts has maintained a constant vigil since the early nineties against the growing threat to local economies and social systems posed by the meteoric rise of big box store development.  

According to a Reuters report,

(Facebook  CEO, Mark) Zuckerberg and his senior management team will spend two days at Wal-Mart Stores Inc’s Bentonville, Arkansas home office this week, meeting with executives of the world’s largest retailer and discussing ways to “deepen” their relationship.

The object of the exercise seems to be to reinforce the mutual opportunities provided by “data mining.”   Those practices have long been in place at the giant retailer, where every customer transaction is carefully logged, then assessed by a massive data management system for the twin purposes of inventory management and sales opportunity.  

Marrying that capability to personal information that may be collected and assessed through Facebook’s twenty-four hour virtual “surveillance” of users’ lives is an obvious next step that will no doubt be accepted with the same relative indifference that has met each revelation of Facebook’s expanding invasiveness.

Remember those futuristic books that creeped us out in middle school, like “Farenheit 451” and “1984?”  The ones where populations are controlled and rendered compliant by sinister powers through ubiquitous media systems?  

Not so remote from reality now.