Beware of the Internet's cozy familiarity: Marketing is the goal of efforts to personalize

AS a twin, I think I have an unusual appreciation for the desireto be unique. When I was 10, this drive even involved breakfast: Ichallenged my mom's homemade-everything policy and begged for brand-name, boxed cereal.

Even if I couldn't convince her that Trix really were for kids -Grape-Nuts and Cheerios were as close as I got - in my mind theyfortified me as an individual, at least in the General Mills sense ofthings.

I ate one kind of cereal and my sister ate another, and I was waytoo young to see the irony of using a brand name to make myselfspecial.

I got past that clueless phase. But these days it seems most ofAmerican society is sinking into my preteen …