The Numerati

By: Stephen Baker

Narrated by: Richard Powers

Every day, we produce loads of data about ourselves simply by living in the modern world: we click web pages, flip channels, drive through automatic toll booths, shop with credit cards, and make cell phone calls.

Now, in one of the greatest undertakings of the 21st century, a savvy group of mathematicians and computer scientists is beginning to sift through this data to profile us as workers, shoppers, patients, voters, potential terrorists, even lovers. Their goal? To manipulate our behavior - what we buy, how we vote - without our even realizing it.

In this tour de force of original reporting and analysis, journalist Stephen Baker provides us with a fascinating guide to the world we're all entering and the people controlling that world.

©2008 Stephen Baker (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Steve Baker puts his finger on perhaps the most important cultural trend today: the explosion of data about every aspect of our world and the rise of applied math gurus who know how to use it." (Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief, Wired magazine)

Corporations hunt us through the forests of number

An eye-opener, and easy to understand and listen to, which cannot be said about all audiobooks on numbers. The author shows how Big Data is being collected on each and all of us, constantly, implacably, all sliced and diced for commercial purposes. Data is collected ceaselessly on us collectively and (chillingly) as individuals, and sold to many eager commercial customers. Corporations target ads to us; dating sites limit our choices based on our statistics and their proprietary theories; medical care is based on statistics, not us; blogs are all analyzed in every detail by Numerati because they reveal so much about the writer.

Baker enlivens his books with his travel tales as he collects the information about the Big Data revolution in American commerce, and with details from his life, which is charming and does make the numbers go down with a spoonful of sugar. I found myself listening for hours at a time, and I don't usually do that with nonfiction. I recommend this book as fascinating and entertaining ----- and it's just as well we know what is going on as we all become numbers to manipulate by big business.

Interesting Overview of the Topic

While I wasn't riveted to the content, I certainly wasn't board and learned a thing or two along the way. If you want to get into this genre, its a good place to start.

Numerous Reasons to Read

Highly recommended. Baker's The Numerati reports on how the growth of large-scale databases and sophisticated analytical techniques are remaking politics, business, health care and government. An excellent companion piece to Ian Ayres book " Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers is the New Way To Be Smart. Ayers is a member of the Numerati (and come to think of it - sort of surprising that he is not profiled in Baker's book) where Baker is a journalist. The books taken together help round out the picture on rapid growth of data and evidence based decision making.

Good but not the best of the genre

This is a book about the existence and contemporary use of data in todays world. The amount of data being gathered each moment is staggering. What is purchased, what people are searching for on google, where people are going, what they are reading etc. This has spawned the practice of using such data to make predictions of what is to happen - what we will be interested in, what we will but, where we will go etc. The people who do this analysis are called the numerati.

It is a very interesting read but there are two other books, Supercrunchers and the Drunkard's Walk that address this same phenomena in different and better ways. All three books demonstrate how this data is used and how one could take advantage of it.

The Numerati want to model you

"The Numerati" is an exploration of the ways math and data are influencing the world, and what that might mean for business and for our privacy.

I thought one of the most interesting takeaways is that number-crunchers are working toward a world in which each real human can be modeled electronically, representing a multitude of characteristics. This model will be used to predict how the person will behave in various contexts -- economic, social, political, medical."