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WITHOUT mathematics our world would be very different - no internet, no mobile phones, no satellite navigation, no passenger aircraft, no CDs, no digital cameras, no MRI scanners. Yet this almost total reliance of our society on mathematics is largely unknown and unappreciated. There are many ways to drag mathematics out of the wings and into the limelight, and these two books follow very different strategies.
The Numerati is short, has no formulas, and no overt mathematical concepts beyond ordinary numbers. It's written in a breezy journalistic style and it avoids sensationalism even when this must have been tempting. It is about the numerical data that supermarkets, banks and internet service providers collect and how they use it - or hope to use it. The numerati have got your number. They've been collecting data for years but until recently had no idea what to do with it.
Your supermarket loyalty card is not free. You pay for it by allowing the supermarket to collect information about your purchases. They know that you always buy a particular brand of razor. Occasionally you pick up a chocolate bar at the checkout. They know how frequently you do this, what your total spend is. So far they've used this data in limited ways. But soon the numerati will be making more effective use of your personal data to persuade you to buy stuff that you wouldn't otherwise have bought. "You like Cherry Coke. How much would Pepsi have to slash the price of its Wild Cherry Cola to entice you to switch?" The hold over you will be even greater when they can track your shopping cart as you pass through the store, link that to your loy-alty card and flash messages on a screen pointing out bargains that they think will appeal to you. And this kind of thing will also happen in your relations with your employer, your vote, your doctor, even your love life.
Is this mathematics? Or is it just numbers? The data may be numbers, but what you do with it involves high-powered maths. Vast amounts of mathematics lurk just under the surface of our lives, making everything possible.
Some of these developments are good, some bad - loss of privacy, even a police state. Another key question, strangely missing from the book, is: will we let these things happen? As the numerati build ever more effective weapons to control our lives, we may decide not to play their games. For every advertisement on the web there is a free add-on to block it. And ultimately, we can spend only what we earn. The Numerati may encourage us to spend it on them, rather than on the opposition, but this arms race has a cost. Like air miles, it could become self-defeating - expensive to operate and of little value once everyone is doing it.
Izvor: 2008 Times Newspapers Ltd.
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