I thought I had come to take it for granted that my data is being collected pretty much all the time. It no longer surprises me when I say my feet hurt and my social media feed is full of ads for orthopedic shoes. But I was still taken aback by some of the examples that crop up in this issue’s cover story, “High Price, Low Price, Your Price, My Price.” One that sticks in my mind especially has to do with a food delivery service analyzing patrons’ hunger level by their scrolling speed.
A while back we received an advance copy of consumer advocate Lindsay Owens C’06’s book Gouged: The End of a Fair Price—and What That Means for Your Wallet, which argues against the practice of charging customers different prices for the same goods based on their personal data, sometimes called “surveillance pricing.” Working with Consumer Reports, her organization helped uncover evidence of variable pricing in grocery stores spanning the country, leading to a petition drive calling for legislation to ban the practice and backtracking by the companies involved.
Senior editor Trey Popp came up with the idea of pairing Owens with Wharton marketing professor Z. John Zhang, who has commented favorably on the concept under certain circumstances in articles and at a Senate hearing where Owens also testified. Both were game for the discussion, and Trey guided them through the civil though spirited debate we present here.
I confess that when I started reading, Owens’ position—price products, not people—seemed unassailable, but Zhang makes a cogent case, putting “personalized pricing” into the context of other types of discounts offered to consumers and claiming it can open products to larger markets, at lower prices, and with more competition. See what you think.
“Within our Bodies: A Third Waterway” by Mary Ann Meyers Gr’76 opens with a lovely and striking metaphor likening the body’s circulatory systems to rivers as she tells the story of Perelman School of Medicine professor Rebecca Wells and her involvement in the discovery of a new circulatory system beyond the lymphatic and cardiovascular systems, dubbed the interstitium by Wells and her collaborator, New York University’s Neil Theise.
Building on work from a century ago with the advantage of 21st-century technology, the researchers identified this new system, which seems to operate between the other circulatory systems, and confirmed that it extends throughout the body. The article explores the implications for diagnosis and treatment, as well as the ways the discovery connects with more holistic approaches to healthcare. “The response to our work of some experts in Chinese medicine, was to shout: ‘That’s what we have been talking about!’” Wells told Mary Ann.
I haven’t bought a ticket to the Trek 60 convention scheduled for November 14–15 here in Philadelphia, but I’m enough of a Star Trek fan that I recognized a disturbing number of the actors listed on the website as being available for pictures and autographs. (And to steal the name of a recent spinoff series for this column’s title.) The event is hosted by Creation Entertainment, whose cofounder and CEO, Gary Berman W’77, is profiled by Jonathan Takiff C’68 in “Present at the Creation.”
It’s one of thousands of fan conventions—for many a pop-culture franchise—that Berman has mounted in the 55 years since he started the company with a childhood friend, pioneering the mammoth infrastructure of Comic-Cons, Fan Expos, etc., that serve our superhero-obsessed culture.
—John Prendergast C’80
Editor
