Courtesy of Jecklin:

For a peek at what’s cooking behind Google’s research lab doors, check out this plan to get your computer to listen in to what you’re watching on tv. By using its microphone to listen in and then connecting to an online database it could identify the show, and how far through you are.

And:

The idea is to use the existing PC microphone to listen to whatever is heard in the background, be it music, your phone going off or the TV turned down. The PC then identifies it, using fingerprinting, and then shows you relevant content, whether that’s adverts or search results, or a chat room on the subject.

And, of course, we wouldn’t put it past Google to store that information away, along with the search terms it keeps that you’ve used, and the web pages you have visited, to help it create a personalised profile that feeds you just the right kind of adverts/content. And given that it is trying to develop alternative approaches to TV advertising, it could go the extra step and help send “content relevant” advertising to your TV as well.

The point with something like this goes way beyond television. It goes directly to a Google device which you willingly carry around with you at all times which acts as a sensory input filter. It sees what you see, hears what you hear and serves you “relevant” (ie, chosen by advertisers and algorithms) content. Hook this thing directly into your sensory perception way down the road and you have an experience of the world totally tailored for you by a major corporation.

{See also: augmented reality, mental spam filters}