Unstructured behavioral signals can reconstruct detailed narratives about each user

Evidence

His work with these data logs persuaded him that detailed stories about each user—thoughts, feelings, interests—could be constructed from the wake of unstructured signals that trailed every online action. These data, he concluded, actually provided a “broad sensor of human behavior” and could be put to immediate use in realizing cofounder Larry Page’s dream of Search as a comprehensive artificial intelligence. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 209

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the foundational insight of behavioral surplus as a ‘broad sensor of human behavior’.
• XREF: The ‘broad sensor of human behavior’ concept connects to surveillance-as-sensing framings in platform and data-industry studies. — connects to: Voice modulation data can be sold to preempt psychological events for many client types — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1314; Pentland’s sociometer turned social interaction into instrumentable, predictively modelable data — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1339; Behavioral prediction from unconscious signals requires continuous workplace sensing — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1350 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• People read other minds by applying learned implicit theories about behavior #corroborates (0.75)