Briefs

October 21, 2008, By Eve Savory, CBC News

Did you check CBC.ca/news this morning, look up the weather for your city, order a political biography online? Did you call your broker at a stoplight from your BlackBerry, Google Prius reviews at the office, use a loyalty card on the way home for heart-healthy groceries and the Globe and Mail?

You are a data miner's dream, blithely shedding priceless data about your life like breadcrumbs behind you.

The people following the crumbs, the people pulling the information together and making sense or nonsense of it, the computer scientists, the mathematicians, the algorithm-makers, are the subject of Stephen Baker's new book The Numerati.

Whether they are using the data to model behaviour that can predict illness or dementia, deliver the love match we've longed for or spell terrorist, Baker says the Numerati are a powerful force shaping both our world and us.

Read more.