There's no point resisting corporate websites. It's time to sell yourself

There's a massive market for our personal information – and we ought to capitalise on itInformation is far from free. Just ask Phyllis Pearsall. She was the woman who drew up the London A-Z by pacing the streets with a notebook for months and months. Or so they say. Sceptics point out that her father ran a cartographical firm that also produced map books of London so she might have benefited from a head start. But, whether obtained through inheritance or shoe leather, her company has been selling that information ever since. These days, you'd just use a satellite.Hang on, though – I may be getting a bit complacent about infrastructure. There should be no "just" when it comes to satellites. Whatever mankind's technological advances, it's still much easier to get people to walk along thousands of streets writing things down than it is to build a satellite equipped with...

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