Pentland frames ubiquitous behavioral data as a radically new mode of social self-knowledge

Evidence

Pentland understands instrumentarian society as an historical turning point comparable to the invention of the printing press or the internet. It means that for the first time in human history, “We will have the data required to really know ourselves and understand how society evolves.” Pentland says that “continuous streams of data about human behavior” mean that everything from traffic, to energy use, to disease, to street crime will be accurately forecast, enabling a “world without war or financial crashes, in which infectious disease is quickly detected and stopped, in which energy, water, and other resources are no longer wasted, and in which governments are part of the solution rather than part of the problem.” This new “collective intelligence” operates to serve the greater good as we learn to act “in a coordinated manner” based on “social universals.” — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1374

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Pentland’s ‘social physics’ ambition and its promise of predictive ‘collective intelligence’ — foundational vocabulary for understanding the instrumentarian ideology.
• XREF: connects to: Personal reflection is reframed as data withholding once social-knowledge norms take hold — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 502; Behavioral surplus extraction extends from virtual spaces into physical life — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 623; Location and phone-sensor data reveal individuals and moods even when anonymized — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 766 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Pentland’s sociometer turned social interaction into instrumentable, predictively modelable data #expands (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1339
• Pentland recasts society as a causal system to be engineered from behavior data #expands (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1382
• New social knowledge alters the social world rather than merely describing it #corroborates (0.80) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 363