Esther Dyson clones self

Esther Dyson has been evangelising the start-up 23AndMe recently. She is an investor in the DIY DNA-sequencing company, founded by Mrs Sergey Brin, and she sits on the board of directors.

"Esther Dyson even brought a few kits with her to the fancy final-night dinner party and had moguls salivating," gushed Jeff Jarvis, the American media critic and blogger.

But little did we know that behind the scenes, Esther's DNA experiments are far more advanced than anyone has realized. Because Esther has succeeding in cloning herself.

Here's the evidence.

In the New York Times last month, Esther Dyson was asked for her opinion of Phorm. She didn't sound keen.

"She questioned whether the quest for more effective behavioral targeting might lead the online advertising business astray," the NYT reported. "Bombarding consumers with more and more ads, even 'relevant' ones, risks sending them to social networking services and other places on the Internet where advertisers find it harder to reach them."

You can't get much clearer than that.

But what's this?

Only a week earlier, under the byline Esther Dyson, we learned that there was a new ad revolution on its way. And it was behavioural - and based around social networks.

"The new model creates a more trusted environment for reaching high-value, frequent purchasers, whether of airline tickets, electronics, clothes or other items," writes Esther. "The new value creators are companies - like Facebook and Dopplr - that know how to build and support online communities."

Now it's obviously not possible for Esther to hold two diametrically opposed and logically inconsistent beliefs about the same subject at once - is it? Of course not. But only if there is one Esther.

So the answer is simple. Esther has cloned herself - and rather than one Esther … there are two, or perhaps many more Esthers.

This has huge revenue potential, especially at $10,000 a day.

Have you spotted an Esther? Do write and let us know. ®