Predicting Technology

Albert-László Barabási, a scientist and prominent figure in complex systems research, recently published a book called Bursts: The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do. In his research, Barabási has been able to predict human mobility patterns from mobile phone data. In a paper he co-authored and appeared in Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.1177170) the abstract goes: "we find a 93% potential predictability in user mobility across the whole user base. Despite the significant differences in the travel patterns, we find a remarkable lack of variability in predictability, which is largely independent of the distance users cover on a regular basis". In a review of his book, published in the June 10, 2010 issue of Nature, the reviewer notes that "Barabási’s success in predicting human mobility patterns from mobile-phone data leads to his plausible, if ominous, suggestion that individuals could be constantly tracked using such techniques coupled with widespread surveillance technologies. Yet his predicting human activity assertion that the prediction of most things we do at the individual level 'is growing increasingly feasible' is not persuasive. Our predictability, to the extent that our choices and movements form a pattern, relies more on extrapolation of past behaviour — as exploited by web-based ‘recommender systems’ that draw on our purchase or browsing history — than on burst characteristics. Similar to avalanches and earthquakes, bursts have statistical orderliness but remain unpredictable as individual events".

The difference between a statistical orderliness and prediction of individual is crucial since it perhaps allows such notions as freedom of will, spontaneity, and serendipity, to survive. Moreover, when thinking about the review I could not help recalling that the discussion seemed somehow familiar. I located the déjà vu in my teenage readings, and in particular in the Foundation Series. In it a mathematician, Hari Seldon, has developed a branch of mathematics that can predict the future, by working on big masses of people. This branch of mathematics, called psychohistory, is shown to be remarkably successful, but fails dismally when a single individual, called The Mule, with formidable mental powers, manages to become master of the world (or almost); psychohistory had not, and could not, predict The Mule.

Fiction predicts science's predictions — and its limits.