...Mr. Pentland has been identified with concepts — and terms he has coined — related to the collection and interpretation of all that data, like “honest signals” and “reality mining.” His descriptive phrases are intended to make his point that not all data in the big data world is equal.
Reality mining, for example, examines the data about what people are actually doing rather than what they are looking for or saying. Tracking a person’s movements during the day via smartphone GPS signals and credit-card transactions, he argues, are far more significant than a person’s web-browsing habits or social media comments.
But Mr. Pentland argues that even the less valuable information in current flood of personal data could help open the door to what he calls “social physics.” That topic is the subject of his new book, “Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread — The Lesson From a New Science.”
Central to the concept of social physics is the ability to measure communication and transactions as never before. Then, that knowledge about the flow of ideas can be used to accelerate the pace of innovation.
The best decision-making environment, Mr. Pentland says, is one with high levels of both “engagement” and “exploration.” Engagement is a measure of how often people in a group communicate with each other, sharing social knowledge. Exploration is a measure of seeking out new ideas and new people.
Link to the full article
Originally published in The New York Times' "Bits" blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment