A careful and thoughtful study of marketing practices and techniques might lead you to different conclusion in terms of how close they are to hacking our brains.
Also, thanks for the tip on the mind reading, that's some interesting stuff!
You're essentially saying to follow the herd then; as a nerd, I can not blindly condone such an action. This doesn't mean you should stop fighting though.
Not very, despite the author's thorough Wikipedia research.
Mind reading, though, that might not be so far away. If you're curious search around for "MRI SVM whole brain classification".