Is our Digital Destiny Brandwashing?

I am reading Digital Destiny: New Media and the Future of Democracy, by Jeff Chester. Also well covered in a recent AdAge Digital article: The Dark Side of Interactive Marketing: How New Media Is Causing the Brandwashing of America. This is basically a book that is strongly anti-corporate. He quickly dismisses the benefits that corporations can provide by spending for the infrastructure itself. Consumers benefit from this spending, both in jobs and new capabilities. Accuses a number of large companies of using -

" ... increasingly sophisticated, but largely invisible, technologies that will "sense" or "know" our interests, dislikes, and habits. Information about our travels -- in cyber and real space -- will be collected and stored, most often without our awareness. Our personal data will be the basis of computerized profiles that quickly generate commercial pitches honed to precisely fit our psychology and behavior.

A ubiquitous system of micropersusaion is emerging, where the potent forces of new media are being unleashed to influence our individual behavior. From the ad industry's initiatives to better perfect measures such as "engagement," to the MI4 research effort (Measurement Initiative for Advertising, Agencies, Media and Researchers) to harness the power of the unconscious mind, to the rapid evolution of "rich media" virtual applications, a marketing technological "arms race" is underway that will further permeate advertising and marketing in our daily lives ... "

Though without a great deal of specific evidence. I found useful the outline of legal issues in communications, but could have done without some of the rant.