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Fuelled by the ease of responding online, our inboxes are now clogged with multiple requests per day for five-star ratings and glowing reviews.

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In the 1980s, Mr Ed Koch, then New York City's mayor, often grabbed bemused commuters emerging from the subway, asking them a simple, surprising question: "How am I doin'?"

Today, that query seems to be asked of everyone, all day long. Whether you have bought detergent or just had a colonoscopy, every store, website, healthcare provider, airline, credit card company, hotel and car dealership wants to know if you are satisfied, how they could improve and whether you will recommend them.

Fuelled by the ease of responding online, our inboxes are clogged with multiple requests per day for five-star ratings and glowing reviews. And no transaction, however mundane, comes without a plea for feedback. Drivers who retrieve their cars from the valet at the Residence Inn in Berkeley, California, immediately receive a text message asking, "How was your valet parking experience?" The simple act of delivering a parked car now becomes an "experience" that needs to be rated.

The quest for reviews "is the ultimate fetishisation of capitalism", said Dr Robert Thompson, founding director of the Bleier Centre for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. "For centuries, our buy/sell relationship was akin to a one-night stand. Now every transaction is the beginning of a relationship" - one that introduces a social dimension with the supplier.

Despite its intrusiveness and time suck, many people tend to engage with feedback - often happily. We love to be asked our opinions. We have gone from a world where people kept their diaries locked to one where we have private conversations on our smartphones as we walk down the street and share our secrets on social media.