Mind Control and the Internet

Paragraph 1: Google became the largest global advertising platform in history when its founders inadvertently (by accident) ____________________________.

Paragraph 2: Targeted ads may seem harmless, but to make ads targeted, companies first need to____________________________, which violates _____________.

Paragraph 2: People's activities are tracked on computers and other devices. The author worries about these records because some people could use these information to _____________.

Paragraph 3: Many companies boost their sales online by _________________.

Paragraph 4: Although the Internet seems to encourage self-expression, it actually ____________________.

Choose the best paraphrasing.

"But then commerce moved in, almost by accident, when Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the duo who started Google, reluctantly paired small ads with their masterful search engine as a way to fund it. "

• Google founders were not really happy about having to finance Google with small ads.

• The Internet was a business proposition right from the beginning.

• It was a coincidence that business started to flood the Internet at the same time that Google founders decided to finance Google with small ads.

Choose the best paraphrasing.

"Targeted ads may seem harmless enough -- after all, if there is going to be advertising, isn't it better if it is for products and services that might be useful? But to pull you into a transaction, companies believe they need to know not only your current interests, but what you have liked before, how old you are, your gender, where you live, how much education you have, and on and on."

• Targeted ads are harmless.

• Companies shouldn't be allowed to know anything about us.

• Companies know too much about us.

"The 'hive mind' created through our electronic connections necessarily obviates the individual -- indeed, that's what makes it a collective consciousness."

• The "hive mind" created by electronic media reflects an individual consciousness rather than a collective one.

• The "hive mind" created by electronic media gives the individual a critical role in collective consciousness-raising.

• The "hive mind" created by electronic media reflects a collective consciousness, not an individual one.

Paragraph 5: In the end of the article, the author suggests that the "hive mind" fostered by Internet is extremely harmful because ___________________.

Based on what you've read, describe one way that Internet controls our minds.