Numbers geek? Conspiracy theorist? Progressive Web 2.0 entrepreneur? If these come even close to describing you, you shouldn’t be without a personal copy of Stephen Baker’s The Numerati (Houghton-Mifflin hardcover, 2008).

As the web grows as the heart of information and commerce in the world, the data we produce daily as workers, shoppers (think Amazon’s book recommendations), voters, bloggers (what does Vernacular say about me?), security threats, patients, and even lovers has caught the attention of the “Numerati”: Baker’s name for the mathematical and technological elite who are building the algorithms that produce shockingly accurate predictions about our identity and behavior. Baker explores these seven dimensions, making his way from the “data serfs” of worker optimization (using surveillance technology would make Orwell cringe) to the “data masters” of personalizing and automating health care based on statistical analysis of our bodies over time using technology that even healthy patients will willfully allow to be hidden in their own homes.

Exciting as this may be, the Numerati are first to admit that this is a scary world. Privacy is to many an illusion, to most recognizably gone. Yet, opportunities abound in the personalization of advertising, job optimization, and medical benefits. But will this affect class structure, the Numerati assessing your place in society based on genes, politics, psychology, and consumer habits? Just as doors open based on qualities like personality, medical history, and even relationship interests, doors close due to discriminatory assumptions based on the analysis of our information when compared statistically to others. If I rely on the Numerati, will I ever meet the unlikely someone who, while statistically incompatible, might in fact be the love of my life? Will I be able to get the job that, due to my psychology and personality characteristics, the data predicts I am not prepared for? What if I would have excelled in that position despite probability? Statistics have always been a practical way of predicting the behavior of great majorities to an accurate enough degree that the ‘outliers,’ as they are called, are negligible. But what if to the Numerati, I am the outlier? What happens to me?

Baker rightly abstains from following the Numerati down a path to the sort of idealized dystopia one could imagine in a statistics-driven world; he poignantly accepts that the Numerati will provide us with more of what we need and want, and more frequently. He is quick to remind us, also, that hey, mathematicians are people too; their tools are far from perfect, and even in the technology-fueled world we live in, they remain just that—tools, for making our lives longer and better.

photo courtesy of  hospi-table through Creative Commons licensing on Flickr.

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