The Numerati [Paperback]

Stephen Baker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 9, 2009

Every day we produce loads of data about ourselves simply by living in the modern world: we click web pages, shop with credit cards, and make cell phone calls. Companies like Yahoo! and Google are harvesting an average of 2,500 details about each of us every month. Who is looking at this data and what are they doing with it? 

 

Journalist Stephen Baker explores these questions and provides us with a fascinating guide to the world we're entering—and to the people controlling that world. The Numerati have infiltrated every realm of human affairs, profiling us as workers, shoppers, voters, potential terrorists—and lovers. The implications are vast. Privacy evaporates. Our bosses can monitor our every move. Retailers can better tempt us to make impulse buys. 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. Entertaining and enlightening, The Numerati shows how a powerful new endeavor—the mathematical modeling of humanity—will transform every aspect of our lives.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In this captivating exploration of digital nosiness, business reporter Baker spotlights a new breed of entrepreneurial mathematicians (the numerati) engaged in harnessing the avalanche of private data individuals provide when they use a credit card, donate to a cause, surf the Internet—or even make a phone call. According to the author, these crumbs of personal information—buying habits or preferences—are being culled by the numerati to radically transform, and customize, everyday experiences; supermarket smart carts will soon greet shoppers by name, guide them to their favorite foods, tempting them with discounts only on items they like; candidates will be able to tailor their messages to specific voters; sensors in homes or even implanted in bodies themselves will report early warnings of medical problems (have you noticed Grandpa has been walking slower?), predict an increased risk of disease in the future or adjust a drug for a single individual. An intriguing but disquieting look at a not too distant future when our thoughts will remain private, but computers will disclose our tastes, opinions, habits and quirks to curious parties, not all of whom have our best interests at heart. (Sept. 15)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Every click we make, every cell phone call, every credit-card purchase enlarges our “digital dossiers,” business journalist Baker explains in this bracing behind-the-screen investigation into the booming world of data mining and analysis. Our digital echoes collect in a vast ocean of data that marketers and government agencies alike are eager to trawl, if only it were charted. Enter the top-notch mathematicians Baker dubs the Numerati. Baker gamely visits eerily high-tech companies and speaks with algorithm wizards intent on quantifying everything we do in all arenas of life in order to mathematically model humanity and manipulate our behavior. Baker’s report on microtargeted marketing, the use of workplace data to “optimize” employees, the scrutiny of online social networks, and the robotic reading of millions of blogs supports his warning that we’re “in danger of becoming data serfs—slaves to the information we produce.” This is a fascinating outing of the hidden yet exploding world of digital surveillance and stealthy intrusions into our decision-making processes as we buy food, make a date, or vote for president. Yet, as Baker assures us, we are not helpless. For one thing, machines still can’t process sarcasm. Read and resist. --Donna Seaman --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; Reprint edition (September 9, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0547247931
• ISBN-13: 978-0547247939
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #438,441 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Started out as journalist at The Black River Tribune, in Ludlow, Vermont. But I wanted to be a foreign correspondent. I freelanced in Spain and Argentina, got a jobs as a reporter at The Daily Journal in Caracas, Venezuela and later, The El Paso Herald-Post. Finally got a job as BusinessWeek's bureau chief in Mexico City, where I stayed for 5 and a half years and where my wife and I started our family (3 boys). We moved on to Pittsburgh, where I got interested in technology, and Paris (four years), before moving back to BusinessWeek in New York. I did a cover story, Math Will Rock Your World, in early 2006. It led to The Numerati.

Shortly before leaving BusinessWeek, in December, 2009, I was visiting IBM Headquarters. Over lunch there I heard about the Jeopardy computer that researchers were building. This seemed like the perfect project for me. I was interested in teaching machines to make sense of language and come up with answers, and I thought I could tell the story of Watson, the Jeopardy robot, almost as a sports story. It starts putting together a team--the comp sci equivalent of spring training--and it culminates with a championship game. That's the story of Final Jeopardy, which comes out in February of 2011.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 51 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Anything you browse can and will be used... to learn more about you September 5, 2008

By Kathy Grace

Format:Hardcover

Stephen Baker, a technology writer for Business Week, takes us into the world of data miners, forecasters, and matchmakers. The math whizzes who analyze our blogs for trends, create the ads that make us eager to buy, and analyze the chatter that could conceal signs of criminal activity--these are the Numerati. Baker gives us a chapter each on work, shopping, politics, spy vs. spy, healthcare, and even [...] (What does the length of your ring finger have to do with the kind of person you're attracted to? Read and find out.)

Some of it is "house-of-the-future" stuff--imagine, for instance, a floor tile that will alert the doctor when your aging parent's gait seems more hesitant than usual. According to Baker, experts watching old reruns of Michael J. Fox shows can detect characteristic signs years before he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.

And then there's the political game. With ever-more-insightful analysis, political math mavens have found that (thank god!) America is nowhere near as polarized as you would expect. Many a liberal Democrat lurks in the McMansion suburbs, and vice versa. But politics is tough--your grocery basket doesn't lie, but nobody wants to give the time of day to a pollster. How they craft the exact political messages that will get you to the voting booth might, oddly enough, be related to your shopping habits.

Shopping--now this is a chapter that should be of interest to every die-hard Amazon fan. Sophisticated algorithms designed to deduce your taste in novels or music can be frighteningly accurate (or, as my Quick Picks occasionally remind me, maddeningly stupid, but that's the topic for a different book). After finishing this chapter, I could think of half a dozen things my grocery store knows about me that I never told them. If they chose to sell their data to magazine publishers, say, we would surely be targeted for the cooking mags ("Look, this family buys at least four units of different fresh herbs a week, and their weight in extra-virgin olive oil every month"). They can tell we have a teenager in the house ("Lots of Clean&Clear products") and could probably guess how old within a year or two ("Look it up--when did they quit buying diapers?"). Any health insurer would be interested in knowing that we spend a lot in produce and seafood, and very little at the meat counter--but what about those frequent trips to the candy aisle? It's a false positive, I swear--they're for the snack bar at my office!

You should be a little frightened, and more than a little fascinated, by The Numerati.

[Edited to add: For a more detailed look at the doings of one of the Numerati, take a look at Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why it Matters, by Bill Tancer of Hitwise.]

57 of 61 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining but not enough substance November 2, 2008

By DWC

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I became interested in this book after reading the companion cover story in BusinessWeek. Although the stories and interviews were interesting, I thought the book fell short on connecting the math beyond the most basic concepts.

Baker admits he was a liberal arts major in college and doesn't pretend to fully understand the math behind the analysis. Obviously, an in-depth mathematical discussion would have been beyond the grasp of most readers and presumably the author. However, a little more detail on the methodologies beyond the simplistic descriptions would have given the book more substance and utility.

Data Mining and Data Warehousing have been around for many years. Retailers have used it extensively to understand their customers. Yet, Baker fails to discuss these established practices and compare them with this new emerging area.

Baker spends most of his book describing the people he interviews in a series of stories. The book is an easy read and is entertaining. If you read for entertainment and are interested in this subject, you will probably like this book. However, if you read for knowledge and are looking for a good, informative business book on this subject, it may disappoint you.

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Review of A Trend, Better With Companion Reading September 10, 2008

By Bill Gossett

Format:Hardcover

I would highly recommend reading Baker's book immediately before or after reading How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of "Intangibles" in Business by Douglas Hubbard. Baker would probably consider Hubbard one of the "numerati". Both authors talk about some of the specifics of the analysis methods (but moreso Hubbard) and both talk about the general trends and impacts (but moreso Baker).

Like his table of contents (which is simply worker, shopper, voter, blogger, terrorist, patient, lover), Baker's book is sweeping if a bit terse in places. As a quant, I find Numerati an easy read with virtually no math but still enlightening even for the most quantitatively adept reader. There were several examples in Baker's book where I already knew of the mathod but had not heard of that application. He did some great research and covered a lot of topics in this giant and elaborate field of work.

My main concern for many management-level readers of this book is that in some cases Baker gives a reader just enough information to think they can apply it to a similar problem they have, falling into the "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" trap. Again, this can be offset with a read of Hubbard's book. It might also have been helpful to talk about the rise of "crackpot rigour" in a world with lots of data and relatively few competent mathematical analysts (various "data mining" experts come to mind).

In all, its one of my favorite reads of the year. I felt like someone was finally casting light on my own obscure field.