Originally appeared in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press

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As databases grew in power, it became possible for companies to know customers as individuals. Credit records show that Ms. Smith buys late-model Volvos, that Dr. Johnson prefers overnight FedEx to 2-day UPS, that Mr. Bond likes his martini shaken, not stirred. Databased marketing allowed business to vault beyond sloppy mass marketing techniques to precision-targeted micro-marketing, in which the individual is king.

This new capability spawned today's intense ethic of "customer satisfaction." Told that we matter from a marketing standpoint, we have come to believe that we matter from an existential viewpoint. Numbers no more, we see ourselves as human beings, with souls, a rung below angels on the evolutionary ladder. When we awaken to the fact that we really are still numbers, that despite a "100% commitment to customer satisfaction" customers are still 100% responsible for their own mood shifts, our indignation is anything but angelic.

A classic case: This week my wife Rachel, on a mission to buy blue dye for our 7th grader's tresses, arrived at the beauty supply shop near closing time. Rachel's watch said 8:55 PM. But the assistant store manager's computer said 9:05 PM, so she wouldn't let them in, despite the fistfuls of cash Rachel held out as a sign of good faith. The computer couldn't save Rachel from the manager's uncaring attitude. It didn't care, either.

Rachel has pledged to never return to this store. Some sacred covenant was violated that night in the doorway. By buying blue dye elsewhere, she would consign the manager o a lifetime of remorse. As if.

Last March I special-ordered 4 megabytes of DRAM memory from a computer superstore outlet for my kids' computer. Astonishingly, they canceled my order without telling me -- not once, but three separate times.

And they had the oddest excuse. "Your order was skewed for government purchase." That meant -- well, I'm not sure what it meant, but the upshot was that they kept canceling the order and not telling me. Weeks would pass, and then I would phone in to be told that I had been victimized by yet another insidious government skew. It took this USA-based computer store 33 weeks and 5 days, with constant prodding and whining from me, to get me my generic chips.

At a certain point you just get a little crazy. Like the Elephant Man, you want to pull the sack off your head and shout out, I am a human being. Not pretty, but human nonetheless.

That's what I did when I got a ticket for expired tags. I had just bought the car, and gone through the rigmarole of new title, insurance, the works. Things had gone awfully, paperwork was lost. At one point I realized I had registered the wrong car. I was going down. I desperately needed a friend in the bureaucracy to pull me to safety. And I knew I didn't have one there.

So it was like the scene in a Sergio Leone movie where the peasant gets pistol-whipped when I edged into the lobby at the Department of Motor Vehicles at the Capitol, sombrero in trembling hand. The air crackled with cruel possibility. The triage clerk quickly examined my papers and informed me I was late and there would be penalties.

"I accept that," I said. "You see, what happened was, I bought the car just as the plates expired, so the renewal notice went to the previous owner and not to me."

"That's no excuse," the bureaucrat said, and blinked at me.

"I didn't mean it as an excuse. I was just -- making conversation."

She scowled. She knew an excuse when she heard one. The system wasn't about to make an exception, especially for the straw-clutching likes of me.

I paid up and left, happy to have stickers at any price. But I couldn't help fantasizing what a world it would be if computers were really advanced, and were interested in our stories, and who we are, and how we were doing:

"You're five minutes late for hair dye? Of course you can still buy some. We'd be pretty short-sighted to let a $5.95 jar of Dippity-Doo screw up a valued relationship, wouldn't we?"

"You need DRAM chips for your kids' computer? Wait right here. I'll scour the database of sources, find those $27 worth of chips, and get them to you by the end of the week, tops."

"You didn't get a license plate renewal notice? Well, doggone it, let's get you fixed up with one right now. And here's a form made out in type bigger than 6 point, so you can read it without an electron microscope. And we still have your auto insurance policy number from the last 19 years!"

Of course, computers don't talk like that. But people could, if customers really mattered. They could open the door for the late arrival, unskew the most intransigent skew, hold your hand as you tiptoe past the sleeping bureaucratic dog.

High tech and high touch: will they ever come together? Let's all hold our breaths and see.

America's Best-Loved Futurist(TM), Michael Finley has a free gift for visitors to http://mfinley.com.