EBOOK
About
Award-winning journalist Stephen Baker traces the rise of the "global math elite": computer scientists who invent ways to not only record our behavior, but also to predict and alter it. Nowadays, we don't need to be online to create a digital trail; we do it simply by driving through an automated tollbooth or shopping with a credit card. As massive amounts of information are collected, sifted, and analyzed, we all become targets of those who want to influence everything from what we buy to how we vote.
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Reviews
"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 [a] president. Yet, as Baker assures us, we are not helpless. For one thing, machines still can't process sarcasm. Read and resist."
Booklist, starred review
"Baker's deep reportage goes beyond smart shopping carts that entice us to run up our grocery bills and political messages crafted on our preference for Chianti . . . The Numerati, Baker writes, try to model 'something almost hopelessly complex: human life and behavior.' They're making progress."
Time
"A kind of travelogue, a report from the shadowy regions where data mining, the search for new algorithms and the divination for the hidden meanings disclosed by our choices animates a type of research that was impossible to imagine before the computer."
The Oregonian