Kiss privacy goodbye--and good riddance, too.

• Author: Gillespie, Nick
• Position: Editor's Note - Editorial

Dear BOOK REVIEW INDEX,

This is no ordinary issue of reason--or of any other magazine, either. The cover is an aerial shot of the address to which we mall your subscription. The ads on the back covers are also customized to you and your neighborhood (not a bad place, by the way, though as a telecommuter I don't envy your area's average commute of 28.25 minutes).

In collaboration with the direct marketing firm Entremedia, printer maker Xeikon, image provider AirPhotoUSA, and Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, we're utilizing bleeding-edge technologies that allow us to tailor each copy of this month's run to most of our subscribers. That's over 40,000 unique versions in all (other readers, including the poor lugs at the newsstand, will get a generic version). This issue hints at a future of hyper-individualized publications that will be assembled for an audience of one: you. Articles, news, commentary--even ads and catalogs--could be targeted so you get only the information and offers in which you're clearly interested.

This sort of targeting reties on what we dub a "Database Nation" in our cover story, which starts on page 26. Our story...