麻豆传媒

will send a shiver down your spine and leave you glancing over your shoulder. But it is no ghost story. You really are being watched.

Journalist takes us to meet the spooks who are watching us, a group he calls the Numerati. They are a growing band of mathematicians and computer scientists tasked with processing the flood of electronic traces we leave behind, to reveal and ultimately influence the way we shop, vote or even fall in love.

As the mathematicians explain to Baker what they are doing and how, it becomes clear that their subjects have little choice about participating in what Baker calls 鈥渢he mathematical modelling of humanity鈥�. As a worker, shopper, voter or blogger, your data is being collected and crunched. Every click of your mouse is fodder for the Numerati.

The Numerati don鈥檛 simply want to know what we are doing 鈥� they want to wrest control of our behaviour. A shopper who often uses shopping discount coupons, for instance, might find their supply cut off or find themselves targeted by adverts exploiting their known weakness for Belgian chocolates. Voters might receive phone calls calculated to appeal to someone with their particular educational background, area code, children鈥檚 ages and income. Those who use dating websites will find that the Numerati have chosen their potential mates.

These examples and others make a compelling case that as more of our information populates databases, and as the mathematics used to mine them grows increasingly sophisticated, the Numerati will become a powerful force. At the moment, though, these methods still have their share of flaws.

In its hunt for covert enemies, Baker says, the US government leans heavily on a mathematical crutch to compensate for shortfalls in human skills 鈥� such as fluency in Arabic or front-line intelligence. For now, this crutch is not a very solid support, IBM鈥檚 chief scientist tells Baker, explaining that today鈥檚 data mining techniques are still not producing the goods. He ought to know, having designed software to track known and future crooks in Las Vegas casinos, which, after 9/11, was enlisted by the CIA for hunting terrorists.

These techniques are, nevertheless, inexorably eroding our privacy, something that will surely grow more concerning if, as Baker suggests, they come to dominate commerce, policing, healthcare and more.

Unfortunately he seems unwilling to devote much space to how we might cope with this Orwellian future. We never find out how the march of the Numerati might be regulated, or how individuals might regain control of their own data. Given widespread worries over government phone tapping in the US and compulsory ID cards in the UK, some suggestions would have been welcome. If the Numerati are going to get your number and everyone else鈥檚, let鈥檚 keep an eye on theirs.