There is a new book out called The Numerati by Stephen Baker. In a nutshell, this book describes machines that are making sense of more and more data about people. As a result, these machines are making more and more decisions for people. The “Numerati” are the people who build these machines and their algorithms.
This book brings to light our journey: machines measuring and directing people and how, as this continues to evolve, it will lead to some pretty interesting consequences … good and bad.
Anyway, Baker names names in this book such as Rayid Ghani (Accenture), Josh Gotbaum (Spotlight Analysis), James Schatz (National Security Agency), Eric Dishman (Intel) and a handful of others as Numerati.
I have a bit of a cameo in the book too (pages 131-37, 140-41, 150-53 and a few other mentions). Also, in this NPR interview (staring at 13:30) Baker describes me as “the dissenting Numerati” which, I still think is a good thing.
And after careful inspection of the references to my work, I must say the author he nailed it. I love that – as there is nothing worse than something untrue making its way into print.
Baker did a fantastic job.
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Jeff, I browsed this book over a cup of coffee @ Borders and decided not to buy it. It is obvious he talked mostly to the theoreticians and not to the practitioners.
The most ironic story to me was about the IBM mathematician calculating human resource choices for projects. Too bad his formulas did not reveal other people within IBM who have already been down that road, and could give him insights and share their learning. Silo-ed thinking/calculations are alive and well!
I will gladly join the club of "Dissenting Numerati"!
Posted by: Valdis Krebs | November 19, 2008 at 05:09 AM
Bob Arno mentioned you and Numerati in his article on redflagging as criminal profiling: http://bobarno.com/thiefhunters/2008/09/redflagging/
Posted by: thiefhunter | November 19, 2008 at 11:02 AM