"We are living in a world in which a handful of high-tech companies,
sometimes working hand-in-hand with governments, are not only monitoring
much of our activity, but are also invisibly controlling more and more
of what we think, feel, do and say. The technology that now surrounds us
is not just a harmless toy; it has also made possible undetectable and
untraceable manipulations of entire populations – manipulations that
have no precedent in human history and that are currently well beyond
the scope of existing regulations and laws. The new hidden persuaders
are bigger, bolder and badder than anything Vance Packard ever
envisioned. If we choose to ignore this, we do so at our peril." Robert Epstein
