[margalabargala]

There is a much less malicious explanation here.

If that tablet company had very recently begun an internet marketing campaign, across multiple ad networks, target approximately your demographic, then it's wholly reasonable that you and your wife would independently see ads for it.

[sircastor]

An analogy to what you're suggesting is that this person and their wife each drove past the same bill board at different times.

I think the thing that most people would really find tragic and scary is that we're all far more predictable and homogenous than we'd like to believe.

[brewtide]

I've always made the statement to friends and associates that google knows far more likely what I am to do 'tomorrow' than I do. Always said half in jest, and half in acknowledgement that they have been tracking to actions physically and online for.. a decade?

It's a low key way of chatting about huge datasets and the pattern matching they can provide to computers that we as individuals simply can't keep mental track of due to scale.

We are not as unpredictable as we all believe our tiny flower selves to be.