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Overview
An urgent look at how a global math elite is predicting and altering our behavior — at work, at the mall, and in bed
Every day we produce loads of data about ourselves simply by living in the modern world: we click web pages, flip channels, drive through automatic toll booths, shop with credit cards, and make cell phone calls. Now, in one of the greatest undertakings of the twenty-first century, a savvy group of mathematicians and computer scientists is beginning to sift through this data to dissect us and map out our next steps. Their goal? To manipulate our behavior — what we buy, how we vote — without our even realizing it.
In this tour de force of original reporting and analysis, journalist Stephen Baker provides us with a fascinating guide to the world we're all entering — and to the people controlling that world. The Numerati have infiltrated every realm of human affairs, profiling us as workers, shoppers, patients, voters, potential terrorists — and lovers. The implications are vast. Our privacy evaporates. Our bosses can monitor and measure our every move (then reward or punish us). Politicians can find the swing voters among us, by plunking us all into new political groupings with names like "Hearth Keepers" and "Crossing Guards." It can sound scary. But the Numerati can also work on our behalf, diagnosing an illness before we're aware of the symptoms, or even helping us find our soul mate. Surprising, enlightening, and deeply relevant, The Numerati shows how a powerful new endeavor — the mathematical modeling of humanity — will transform every aspect of our lives.
STEPHEN BAKER has written for BusinessWeek for over twenty years, covering Mexico and Latin America, the Rust Belt, European technology, and a host of other topics, including blogs, math, and nanotechnology. But he's always considered himself a foreign correspondent. This, he says, was especially useful as he met the Numerati. "While I came from the world of words, they inhabited the symbolic realms of math and computer science. This was foreign to me. My reporting became an anthropological mission." Baker has written for many publications, including the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Boston Globe. He won an Overseas Press Club Award for his portrait of the rising Mexican auto industry. He is the coauthor of blogspotting.net, featured by the New York Times as one of fifty blogs to watch.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780547247939 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 09/09/2009 |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 256 |
| Sales rank: | 593,770 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
What will the Numerati learn about us as they run us into dizzying combinations of numbers? First they need to find us.
Say you're a potential SUV shopper in the northern suburbs of New York, or a churchgoing, antiabortion Democrat in Alburquerque. Maybe you're a Java programmer ready to relocate to Hyderabad, or a jazz-loving, Chianti-sipping Sagittarius looking for walks in the country and snuggles by the fireplace in Stockholm, or--heaven help us--maybe you're eager to strap bombs to your waist and climb onto a bus.
Whatever you are--and each of us is a lot of things--companies and governments want to identify and locate you. The Numerati also want to alter our behavior. If we're shopping, they want us to buy more. At the workplace, they're out to boost our productivity.
When we're patients, they want us healthier and cheaper. As companies like IBM and Amazon roll out early models of us, they can predict our behavior and experiment with us. They can simulate changes in a store or an office and see how we would likely react. And they can attempt to calculate mathematically how to boost our performance. How would shoppers like me respond to a $100 rebate on top-of-the-line Nikon cameras?
How much more productive would you be at the office if you had a $600 course on spreadsheets? How would our colleagues cope if the company eliminated our positions, or folded them into operations in Bangalore? We don't have to participate, or even know that our mathematical ghosts are laboring night and day as lab rats. We'll receive the results of these studies--the optimum course--as helpful suggestions, prescriptions, or marching orders.
Table of Contents
Introduction 11. Worker 17 2. Shopper 41 3. Voter 67 4. Blogger 96 5. Terrorist 123 6. Patient 154 7. Lover 182
Conclusion 201
Acknowledgments 219 Notes 221 Sources and Further Reading 231 Index 233
What People are Saying About This
"This is the ultimate revenge of the nerds. The Numerati are sweeping through entire industries, using bits and bytes to construct digital replicas of each of us and then forecast our behavior... A terrific read."--(Don Tapscott, co-author of Wikinomics)
"In this timely and compelling book, Stephen Baker pulls back the curtain on the number-crunchers who have insinuated themselves into our lives. You'll be amazed, alarmed-and, at times, even inspired-by the power of this new geek elite to predict whom we'll marry, what we'll buy, and how we'll vote."--(Daniel H. Pink, author of A Whole New Mind)
"From how we vote, to how we shop, to how we date, and even to how we think, the people we meet in the pages of Steve Baker's fascinating book are transforming our world. Whether these changes are for the better or for the worse is up to us. The Numerati is one of those rare reads that is as enlightening at it is entertaining. It will change the way you look at life."--(Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post)