The Limits of Big Data For Social Engineering 95
An anonymous reader writes "In his new book, Social Physics, MIT data scientist Alex 'Sandy' Pentland argues that by analyzing data from smartphones, social media, and credit-card systems, we'll soon be able to have a mathematical understanding of 'the basic mechanisms of social interactions.' Social scientists will be able to understand and predict the interactions of people the way physicists understand and predict the interactions of objects. That will, in turn, enable governments and businesses to create incentive systems to 'tune' people's behavior, making society more productive and creative. In a review of Pentland's book in Technology Review, Nicholas Carr argues that such data-based social engineering 'will tend to perpetuate existing social structures and dynamics' and 'encourage us to optimize the status quo rather than challenge it.' Carr writes, 'Defining social relations as a pattern of stimulus and response makes the math easier, but it ignores the deep, structural sources of social ills. Pentland may be right that our behavior is determined largely by social norms and the influences of our peers, but what he fails to see is that those norms and influences are themselves shaped by history, politics, and economics, not to mention power and prejudice.'"
Wrong audience (Score:3, Funny)
This is for some BA forum. Not a BS forum like this!
Where is Hari Seldon when you need him... (Score:3, Funny)
Ah, Asimov was ahead of his time.
basic mechanisms of social interactions (Score:2, Funny)
I think I wrote that back in middle school
10 wake up
20 go somewhere public
30 regret it and go home
40 sleep 28800
50 GOTO 10