Honest Signals: How They Shape Our World (Bradford Books) by Alex Pentland

Author:Alex Pentland
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2009-10-29T23:19:00+00:00

7

SENSIBLE SOCIETIES

The next care to be taken, in respect of the Senses, is a supplying of their infirmities with Instruments, and as it were, the adding of artificial Organs to the natural ... and as Glasses have highly promoted our seeing, so 'tis not improbable, but that there may be found many mechanical inventions to improve our other senses of hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. Robert Hooke, Preface to Micrographia, 1664

We can well imagine that other seventeenth-century scientists were skeptical about Hooke's vision of the future, but his predictions have been surprisingly accurate. His forecasts, however, overlooked a crucial sense: our social sense. Today, the sociometer and instruments like it enable a magnification of our social sense. Through these new instruments, we have the ability to look past our cultural and psychological biases and presuppositions to see ourselves from a new perspective. What difference might this new view of human behavior make?

New types of measurement instruments bring new data, which in turn lead to a new understanding of our world. To better appreciate the impact that a new type of measurement instrument can have, consider the humble optical lens of Hooke's era. This measurement technology became widely accessible in the early i6oos, and by the middle of that century this simple invention had already overthrown our concept of humanity's place in the world. Based on his telescope observations, Galileo Galilei's book Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger) showed that the earth was not the center of the entire universe; if the earth was not the center, then perhaps humanity was not the crown of creation.

By the last half of the i6oos, when Hooke wrote about the wonders of the microscope, he was part of a full-fledged revolution created by the ability of the optical lens to enhance human vision. Hooke used optical lenses to look at microscopic life, and observed that humans were composed of small living cells, and that these same sorts of single-celled life-forms crawled on our skins and swam in our guts. He demonstrated that humans are not pristine creatures but instead are embedded in a swarm of microscopic life-forms, and our bodies are composed from these same tiny bits of life. Humanity no longer stood apart from the rest of creation.

The optical lens also allowed us to create accurate maps and was central to some of the greatest success stories in physics. Mapping and physics introduced the idea that our surrounding physical environment could be accurately measured and scientifically modified to achieve human goals. As with the microscope and telescope, these achievements were important in changing our idea about humanity's place in the world. Humans were now seen as masters of creation, no longer by divine right, but rather by the work of our own minds and hands.

The sociometer and instruments like it that allow for the continuous, quantitative measurement of human behavior will undoubtedly change our self-concept and worldview-but how? The impact of these new tools will likely happen in much the same manner as with previous

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