Reason Magazine Editor Nick Gillespie asks, "What if you received a magazine that only had stories and ads that you were interested in and pertained to you? That would be a magazine that everyone would want to read." He's right and his magazine has already demonstrated the power of databases in generating custom content. The June issue of Reason Magazine will be delivered to its 40,000 subscribers with 40,000 separate covers. Each cover will show a real satellite photo of their neighborhood with their own house circled.

While dramatic - especially to a publication posted off to a bunch of libertarians - the display of database knowledge isn't very deep. More impressive would be a publication with what mattered to the individual recipient. It's the elusive "Insert-Your-Name-Here" magazine that would, in theory, make newsstand sales balk. Which brings up the interesting issue of just how individual tastes and interests are. In the mid-90s, when several tech firms developed book and CD recommendation engines, users were disappointed to see that they generally kept recommending the same best sellers. Engineers blamed the vanilla tastes of the market. As the technology increasingly makes it reasonable to develop intensely custom publishing, the question grows louder: would it be useful?