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Scientists use big data to sway elections and predict riots — welcome to the 1960s

A cold-war-era corporation targeted voters and presaged many of today’s big-data controversies.
  1. Jill Lepore

    1. Jill Lepore is professor of American history at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a staff writer at The New Yorker, host of podcast The Last Archive, and author of If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future (2020).

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Detroit's riot in 1967.

Protests against racism in Detroit, Michigan, and many other US cities in 1967 prompted attempts to forecast future demonstrations. Credit: -/AFP via Getty

Ignorance of history is a badge of honour in Silicon Valley. “The only thing that matters is the future,” self-driving-car engineer Anthony Levandowski told The New Yorker in 20181.

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Nature 585, 348-350 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-02607-8

References

  1. Duhigg, C. ‘Did Uber Steal Google’s Intellectual Property?’ The New Yorker (22 October 2018).

  2. Lepore, J. ‘The Disruption Machine’ The New Yorker (23 June 2014).

  3. Lepore, J. ‘Politics and the New Machine’ The New Yorker (16 November 2015).

  4. Mesthene, E. G. (ed.) Toward the Year 2018 (Foreign Policy Association, 1968).

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  5. de Sola Pool, I. Backgr. 10, 111–122 (1966).

    Article  Google Scholar 

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