Whenever I have doubts about the ingenuity of mankind, I rummage around the house for the latest edition of the Brookstone catalogue. There, under one roof, I can find gadgets—each one “better” than the next—that can solve all of my problems. Even the ones I didn’t know I had.

Trouble pulling into the garage? There’s a gadget for perfect parking. Lose your car keys too often? Press a button and Brookstone will help you find them. Can’t stand the beeping made by the gadget on page 36? They’ve probably got headphones on page 38 that will mask the noise. It’s like an app store for, well…stuff!

I was reminded of this recently when I saw some news about how a group of U.S. trade bodies has developed a graphic for the Web that indicates behavioral targeting has taken place via the use of cookies to track Web users from site to site. The purpose of the icon is to assure the Web browser that the advertiser is a good guy who’s sticking to a set of industry-set regulatory rules.

Excuse me if I’m over thinking this, but it seems to me the creators of this concept—a group of leading advertising and marketing trade organizations—are addressing the symptom, rather than the problem. Just as the buyers of Brookstone products could practice parking skills or could put the car keys back in the right spot every time, there are ways to deal with privacy issues that don’t involve adding a meaningless icon to the clutter already on the screen.

Ask anybody who browses the Web and looks at advertising if they know the advertisers are gathering information on them and their eyes will no doubt narrow, their lips will compress and they’ll say, “Yeah. It’s a fact of life.” Those who developed the idea for the icon, however, said people actually are “rarely aware” they are being tracked, whatever that means, and 84 percent of them object to the activity. I believe half of that.

Generally, people understand that advertisers wouldn’t put information out there if they didn’t figure there was some way to make a buck off of it. If that includes tracking you, so be it. On the plus side, maybe that information will be used to give you a good deal on the camera of your dreams or a great holiday break. On the negative side it could be used to pitch a set of Ginsu knives. Or an Edgar bobble-head doll just for reading this blog.

But rather than simply alerting us to the prying eyes peeking over our shoulders, wouldn’t it be better for these agencies to hold the advertising and direct marketing communities to a higher standard? Wouldn’t it benefit everyone if those organizations would use their clout to ensure that users could feel that their privacy is being protected?

It seems to me that people can live with sharing their behavior with brand marketers, when they regard those brands as friends. So instead of giving us the illusion of safety—like taking off our shoes at airport security—by putting icons on the screen, I would suggest that the industry work vigorously to make sure that its own house is in order.

By the way, I think there’s a Brookstone gadget for that.

There’s plenty of blame to throw around for why the modern Super Bowl is what it is: an overhyped orgy of athletics and advertising that starts too late, lasts too long and sometimes even provides a rollicking good evening of entertainment.

Blame Bart Starr, if you must, or Joe Namath. Better yet, blame Mike Ditka, Buddy Ryan and those 1985 Bears who humiliated the New England Patriots in a game so boring that even Boston fans stopped crying in their Sam Adams and just conceded their team just wasn’t good enough.

They’re all responsible in a way for teasing us with the idea that what’s billed as the biggest football spectacle of the year might actually be as good as Joe Namath predicted and others have shown over the years or — as the Bears and Starr’s Green Bay Packers showed — the game can be so dull that billions of viewers are more interested in watching the slew of advertisements that pay for the bloated spectacle.

It’s been said too many times that the ads are the best part of the Super Bowl. Advertisers themselves have fed that myth by holding their best stuff for the big game.

Interactivity kicks that part of the game up another level by making the ads something that can hold attention even beyond the 30 or 60 second slots into which they’ve been placed.

The most obvious spot for interactivity is via a storyline that continues beyond the ad’s allotted time. Imagine those Budweiser Clydesdales kicking a field goal — it’s been done, I know — and using the interactivity button to learn whether it’s good or bad. Chances are you won’t miss anything of the game and if you’re really into seeing every nanosecond of every play, you can use your manual dexterity to push both the interactive and pause buttons.

For those who don’t like distractions, there are interactive platforms that can provide you with the best of both worlds: the millisecond-by-millisecond grind of the on-field thrills and the opportunity to learn — or maybe even vote on — whether the field goal was good. Talk about multi-tasking. What more could you ask for? Drama on both ends of the scale.

Interactivity can even take the drama off the field and put it right in your living room in the midst of your Super Bowl party. There might be multiple views of the field; there might be multiple interactive possibilities to explore; but there is only one remote. In a crowd of Super Bowl partiers, with beverages flowing more freely than the New Orleans offense, imagine the impact of being the only person in control. You’ll either be more popular than Peyton Manning or more harried than Drew Brees — or, depending on your fan preferences, the reverse.

Imagine this situation. The Bud Clydes line up for the winning field goal against the washed up Coors Light coaches. The snap is good; the ball is sailing towards an end zone projected on an Apple iPad. The Sony cameras are clicking, the Panasonic videocams are rolling, fingers are poised over BlackBerries to tweet the results, and the program returns to the game. As the owner of the remote you control the party’s destiny. You determine whether you click to the interactive site for the field goal or return in time to see Manning change the play at the line.

What do you do?

And if that’s not more exciting than either the game or the ads that support the game then my name isn’t Archie Manning. Oh, wait a minute, my name isn’t Archie Manning. Nevermind.