Computers, Civilization, All That

I love the Dewey Decimal system.  I love the way it gathers things into ever more specific groups.  I love the way that it promotes browsing in a general topic area while at the same time facilitating finding one particular title.  But what I especially love is the way it illustrates the connections between books on more complex topics, connections that might otherwise be missed.

One of my favorite examples of this is the Dewey call number 303.483, which breaks down as Social Processes and Change as affected by the Development of Science and Technology.  I’m not sure exactly what Melvil Dewey had in mind here, but today, as you would no doubt guess, most of the items here are about Computers and Civilization. 

The books in 303.483 seem to come in waves; there were several in the 90s, with revealing titles like The Devouring Fungus and Moths to the Flame, and now, for whatever reason, there has been another upsurge over the past year.  One new one I found particularly interesting is The Numerati by Stephen Baker. 

The Numerati are the mathematicians and computer scientists currently trying to make useful those mountains of data we’re all creating as we go about our lives in the modern wired world.  Their goal is to create accurate mathematical models of human behavior that can then be used to predict and manipulate that behavior.   This in itself is nothing new; what are new are the diversity and volume of the data available and the level of specificity that they’re seeking.  They’re not trying to make a model of, say, older-than-average first-time mothers or male Cubs fans; they’re trying to make a model of YOU.

Baker sought out the various companies working on these models to learn what they are doing and how.   Corporate employers, marketers, politicians, secret-service agents, and matchmakers are all employing mathematicians these days.  Basically, their task is to sort us into ever-more specific groups according to the needs and desires of their particular employer—sort of like turning us all into really long Dewey Decimal numbers. 

The vast amount of data available makes this a challenging task.  Computers are good at counting and sorting, but they are slow learners and need very specific parameters, so the development of these models takes substantial investment.  For example, teaching a computer to differentiate between male and female bloggers took 30 humans reading and annotating 100,000 blogs to accomplish.  That’s expensive, but knowing you is worth it.

The Numerati is primarily descriptive rather than evaluative.   This is actually quite effective.  I spent this past week sharing my newly acquired knowledge about the “how” with others and watching for the reaction.   Personalized coupons, ho-hum … Hey, wait.  Too late!  That word frequency analysis of your e-mail account is already on the boss’s desk. 

Neil Postman once suggested that we may be embracing technology in a “hurried and mindless way” and giving it powers that a “fully attentive culture might have wished to deny it.”  His Technopoly: the Surrender of Culture to Technology has been on the 303.483 shelf for 17 years now.  That’s eons in tech-time, but Postman’s work endures.  He takes an “ecological” view of the introduction of significant new technology:  it may be good, but it is never without consequence: “it does not add or subtract something, it changes everything.”

The Internet changes everything.  Ho-hum.  For those who think there may be more for the fully attentive to consider, Postman’s Technopoly is a good reflection starter.

Numerati.  Technopoly.  It all sounds vaguely sinister.  Then again, we’re talking about mathematicians, statisticians, computer scientists – you, know, the kind of people that would find art and beauty in the Dewey Decimal System.   It put me in mind of Karl Iagnemma’s short story collection, On the Nature of Human Romantic Interaction.  Iagnemma is a robotics engineer at MIT, something most writers of fiction are not.  In his prize-winning title story, a young academic attempts to use mathematical equations to understand and influence his love life.  He is unsuccessful and loses his girl friend in the process.  All is not lost, though, as he concludes,” There are elements in nature, I've noticed, that cannot be explained or reproduced, that simply are. It's enough to give a person hope.”

Iagnemma’s collection will not be found on the 303.483 shelf – some connections can only be made by humans.

(Photograph from crabchick, Creative Commons, Flickr.com)