Pentland’s sociometer turned social interaction into instrumentable, predictively modelable data

Evidence

The researchers’ response was to introduce the “sociometer,” a wearable sensor that combines a microphone, accelerometer, Bluetooth connection, analytic software, and machine learning techniques designed to infer “the structure and dynamic relationships” in human groups. (Choudhury would eventually run the People Aware Computing group at Cornell University.) From that point onward, Pentland and his teams have worked to crack the code on the instrumentation and instrumentalization of social processes in the name of a totalistic social vision founded on a comprehensive means of behavior modification. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1339

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the sociometer as Pentland’s key instrumentation concept bridging wearable sensing to behavior modification.
• SEED: The sociometer as a concrete artifact could anchor an essay on how wearable instrumentation quietly became the ‘prediction appliance’ of social life.
• XREF: connects to: Klout algorithmically quantified social media influence and status. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 252; IBM commercialized academic personality prediction into a vast commercial service — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 862; Pentland frames ubiquitous behavioral data as a radically new mode of social self-knowledge — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1374 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Pentland frames free will as a low-frequency statistical deviation from predictable social patterns #expands (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1406
• Unstructured behavioral signals can reconstruct detailed narratives about each user #expands (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 209