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I enjoy reading about real world applications of math and science and I had high hopes when Santa brought "The Numerati". The book gushes "gee whiz" about how computers are making data acquisition and mining near universal but fails to balance the hype with realistic assessment of the effectiveness of these trends (or fads). It comes off as if the author totally buys all the marketing hype of the data mining proponents so it is almost an infomercial.It didn't help that I was reading the section about how internet traffic is being monitored to prevent terrorism during the same week the "underwear bomber" set himself alight on the flight into Detroit.and we learned how the inteligence apparatus managed to ignore all the data indicating this guy was a problem.Save your money and don't buy this book.
This book is amazing, it explains in an extremely plain and simple manner how our personal data is being used these days to create very exact profiles of our habbits and our desires and the powerfulness of this data for the companies worldwide, it also predicts how this data will be used even more in the near future so that The Numerati, the world's best mathematicians together with the most powerful computers will analyze every bit, every zero or one of information we produce everyday in order to rule our lifes.In brief, is an easy to read book that makes you realize about how your personal data is being used in situations and things you won't ever imagine and which in some passages of the book could even scare you.Definitively a must read.
Have you ever wondered what fuels the massive value of companies like Google or Facebook. Well that depends on which pill you would have taken in "The Matrix". For some, these arguments will seem "tech-light" and perhaps over stated but I think that if you read this, like I did, for the bigger picture then this won't bother you much.
If you answered yes to these questions then you might enjoy this book about the "numerati ", organizations whose purpose is the collection and analysis of your behavior. This is a good book for anyone that wants to understand more about who is watching and why. Have you ever wondered, as you were clicking through one of those license agreement pages, what you were giving away by affirming.
After reading this book I couldn't help feeling like one of the "pods" in the movie "The Matrix", fueling the numerati with my data, and all the while happily going about my daily routine never understanding what is happening behind the scenes. This book answers the question "who are the numerati." with examples from the worlds of marketing, politics, insurance, medicine, security, and counter-terrorism. It answers the question "how do the numerati operate." in simple terms without going into much technical detail.
Should you read this book. I recommend that you take the red pill - stay in Wonderland and let this book show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.
I found this book to be more like a series of Time magazine articles than a well-planned and coherent book. sends electronic messages to whomever is providing the service. Each of the articles (i.e., chapters) was interesting and I learned a bit here and there from them but in the end it was not a substantial book. Any relatively intelligent person has already figured out that using Fast Track, rewards cards, the internet, library cards, a cell phone, online banking, etc., etc., etc. I was surprised, however, that the author did devoted only one page to the use of RFIDs and did not mention implantable RFIDs. I also don't recall reading anything about the dangers posed by hackers, which is possibly a greater threat to individual security than that posed by government, corporate and institutional use of our private data.
I launched several projects within my company to tranfer the principles discussed in this book. Even though some of the concepts are not easily transfarable into my industry, I still was amazed and inspired by way they were approaching their data hurdles.
Do you try to model (or even predict) the behavior of your customers, business partners or voters.Then this book is (most probably) a piece of relief for you, as it has been for myself. Are you somebody, whose role is to make sense of vast pool of data within your company.
Stephen Baker took the time to collect the best practice and inspiration from wide array of industries and environments on how data can be systematically turned into more business or power within your battlefield. For several years I am part of different bodies and institutions that try to draw conclusion from their customer historical track records.
After several years of working in this trade we all come to stage, where you do not have enough source of inspiration from peers (because you left them far behind) in your industry or you already have tried most of what makes just a bit of the sense. It is very thought provoking how far we already reach in datamining - and top of that - utilizing the results of it.
If you still are unsure about buying this book, then invest few dollars of its price at least into understanding how much digital traces and hints you leave around and how much more privacy invading is just around the corner for next years.
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