[mst]

At my first ever job where I was actually hired as a programmer (December 2000) my first project was to build a web stats system. I knew little enough that I flailed for the first week or two, then independently invented the tracking pixel from first principles - backed by an unbelievably ugly perl CGI script - to enable data collection.

It collected only pages visited, browser versions and referer (sic) headers - it didn't occur to me to collect anything else - and yet provided vast amounts of business value to our customers as well as a vast amounts of experience at scaling for me (though, uh, given how badly the early versions of that code scaled, not necessarily at the same time).

> The point is, this tracking pixel on its own is incredible what it unlocks. It’s the way that data is then used that we have to call into question.

I entirely agree with this statement, and what's happened since saddens me.

I'm going to pour another drink and take a moment to feel old now.

(edited to add: 'tracking pixel' seems to mean that class of instrument to many other commenters, I'm specifically talking about an <img> tag that loaded a single pixel transparent gif ... I also made bar charts for the analytics users' UI using HTML tables with a pair of <td> tags per row, one with a coloured background, one clear, using percentages to provide relative data. 2001 was a different world)