The Numerati
The Numerati is a book about math that won鈥檛 cause liberal-arts majors to heave it across the room. The slender volume contains not a single esoteric Greek letter or mystifying equation.
What鈥檚 more, writer Stephen Baker artfully conjures up vivid images to explain what he鈥檚 talking about and why a reader should care.
"The Numerati鈥� is a more literary name for what used to be called 鈥渘umber crunchers,鈥� the mathematicians and computer geeks who understand programming, probability, and seemingly incomprehensible theorems. Teamed with ever more powerful computers linked to the Internet, they鈥檙e on a mission.
鈥淭hey鈥檙e looking for patterns in data that describe something almost hopelessly complex: human life and behavior,鈥� Baker writes. 鈥淭he audacity of their mission is almost maddening.鈥�
They aim to figure out what we鈥檙e going to buy, who we鈥檙e going to vote for, how well we do our jobs, perhaps even who we鈥檙e likely to fall in love with, by analyzing the statistical patterns of data.
Think you carefully guard your privacy? Think again. It鈥檚 becoming an almost impossible task.
We all leave a trail of digital bread crumbs from our cellphone calls, Internet searches, credit card purchases, and blog entries, or on our home pages at social-networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook.
Even withholding our names doesn鈥檛 necessarily make us anonymous anymore. Eighty-seven percent of Americans can be identified by name if only their gender, birth date, and postal zip code can be determined, one recent study found.
Data whizzes, Baker concludes, 鈥渁re adding us up. We are being quantified.鈥�
East Germany used to employ thousands of spies to find out what their citizens were up to. That鈥檚 so 20th-century.
Today, 鈥淭he computer will rat on us, exposing each one of our online secrets without a nanosecond of hesitation or regret.... we are in danger of becoming data serfs 鈥� slaves to the information we produce.鈥�
We meet the Numerati in their offices, at cafes, going about their work. They seem like regular folks, though most don鈥檛 seem to have given much thought as to how computerized profiling is changing the world.
Using massive data crunches, for example, stores will be able to spot and discourage 鈥渂arnacles,鈥� shoppers who nip in to buy only discounted items. Barnacles will be identified and removed from mailing lists, not offered coupons, and otherwise deterred from shopping at that store. Shoppers who鈥檝e shown they鈥檙e big spenders, on the other hand, could be offered extra benefits.
Political strategists already seek the help of the Numerati.
鈥淚f the data we emit gives off even the slightest whiff of 鈥榮wing voter,鈥� the political Numerati will be hot on our tracks,鈥� Baker says.
The aim: Calculate the rate of return for each advertising dollar so that ads reach only the exact people they are designed to influence.
We鈥檙e being watched and quantified. In fact, a mathematical double of each of us is being created for the Numerati to observe and experiment on. 鈥淚n this new world, all of us are going to face situations in which our most intimate data is exposed, at least to somebody,鈥� he says.
Baker, a senior writer and technology blogger at BusinessWeek, isn鈥檛 a dystopian about our shrinking privacy. He simply notes that there鈥檚 not a lot we can do about it.
We can read the small print on website privacy disclosures before we sign up (even better, one wonders, how about employing computer programs to read the legalese and alert us to any potential privacy problems?).
Someday people may market their personal data themselves, in essence, get ahead of the curve and profit from what鈥檚 going to be found out about them anyway.
At least some of the time, most people will want to be found and analyzed. We鈥檒l want our digital identity to be out where computers can find it, whether we鈥檙e searching for love or money, Baker says.
The incentives to make ourselves intelligible to machines will be too strong to resist. 鈥淲e need good page rank. We must fit ourselves to algorithms.鈥�
Governments and businesses have long collected information on us. But never before could they collect the various bits and pieces in one spot, and then sift, shake, and sort them into a coherent picture.
The old programming adage 鈥� 鈥済arbage in, garbage out鈥� 鈥� is growing less true, Baker says.
Powerful new algorithms are going through your digital garbage and turning it into a gold mine of data about you.
Gregory M. Lamb is on the Monitor staff.
