Librería Portfolio

From one of the world´s leading data scientists, a landmark tour of the new science of idea flow, offering revolutionary insights into the mysteries of collective intelligence and social influence

If the Big Data revolution has a presiding genius, it is MIT´s Alex ´Sandy´ Pentland. Over years of groundbreaking experiments, he has distilled remarkable discoveries significant enough to become the bedrock of a whole new scientific field: social physics. Humans have more in common with bees than we like to admit: We´re social creatures first and foremost. Our most important habits of action--and most basic notions of common sense--are wired into us through our coordination in social groups. Social physics is about idea flow, the way human social networks spread ideas and transform those ideas into behaviors.

Thanks to the millions of digital bread crumbs people leave behind via smartphones, GPS devices, and the Internet, the amount of new information we have about human activity is truly profound. Until now, sociologists have depended on limited data sets and surveys that tell us how people say they think and behave, rather than what they actually do. As a result, we´ve been stuck with the same stale social structures--classes, markets--and a focus on individual actors, data snapshots, and steady states. Pentland shows that, in fact, humans respond much more powerfully to social incentives that involve rewarding others and strengthening the ties that bind than incentives that involve only their own economic self-interest.

Pentland and his teams have found that they can study patterns of information exchange in a social network without any knowledge of the actual content of the information and predict with stunning accuracy how productive and effective that network is, whether it´s a business or an entire city. We can maximize a group´s collective intelligence to improve performance and use social incentives to create new organizations and guide them through disruptive change in a way that maximizes the good. At every level of interaction, from small groups to large cities, social networks can be tuned to increase exploration and engagement, thus vastly improving idea flow.

Social Physics will change the way we think about how we learn and how our social groups work--and can be made to work better, at every level of society. Pentland leads readers to the edge of the most important revolution in the study of social behavior in a generation, an entirely new way to look at life itself.



Table of Contents:
Preface: The Origin of the Book -- Acknowledgments -- 1. From Ideas to Actions -- Using Big Data to Understand How Human Societies Evolve -- What Is Social Physics? -- A Practical Science -- Big Data -- A Rich Social Science -- Plan for the Book -- Data-Driven Societies: Promethean Fire -- Special Topic: Language -- Part I. Social Physics -- 2. Exploration -- How Can We Find Good Ideas and Make Good Decisions? -- Social Learning -- Idea Flow -- Idea Flow and Decision Making -- Tuning Networks -- Exploration -- 3. Idea Flow -- The Building Blocks of Collective Intelligence -- Habits, Preferences, and Curiosity -- Habits versus Beliefs -- Collectively Rational, Not Individually Rational -- Common Sense -- 4. Engagement -- How Can We All Work Together? -- Social Pressure -- Digital Engagement -- Subjugation and Conflict -- Rules of Engagement -- Next Steps -- Special Topic: The Mathematics of Social Influence -- Part II. Idea Machines -- 5. Collective Intelligence -- How Patterns of Interaction Translate into Collective Intelligence -- Measuring What You Manage -- Productivity -- Creativity -- Improving Idea Flow -- 6. Shaping Organizations -- Social Intelligence Through Visualization of Interaction Patterns -- Engagement -- Exploration -- Diversity -- Social Intelligence -- 7. Organizational Change -- Social Network Incentives Can Be Used to Create Instant Organizations and Guide Them Through Disruptive Change -- Instant Organizations -- Organizations in Stress -- Trust -- Next Steps -- Special Topic: Social Signals -- Part III. Data-Driven Cities -- 8. Sensing Cities -- How Mobile Sensing Is Creating a Nervous System for Cities, Enabling Them to Become More Healthy, Safe, and Efficient -- Behavior Demographics -- Transportation -- Health and Disease -- Social Network Interventions -- From a Digital Nervous System to a Data Driven Society -- 9. City Science -- How Social Physics and Big Data Are Revolutionizing Our Understanding of Cities and Development -- The Social Physics of Cities -- Social Ties in Cities -- Exploring the City -- Idea Flow in Cities -- Designing Better Cities -- Data-Driven Cities -- Next Steps -- Special Topic: Digital Networks Versus Face-to-Pace -- Part IV. Data-Driven Society -- 10. Data-Driven Societies -- What Will a Data-Driven Future Look Like? -- The New Deal on Data -- Enforcement -- The Wild, Wild Web -- Data-Driven Systems: Challenges -- Social Physics versus Free Will and Human Dignity -- 11. Design for Harmony -- How Social Physics Can Help Us Design a Human-Centric Society -- Natural Law: Exchanges, Not Markets -- Design for a Networked Society -- Data for Development: D4D -- Summary: Promethean Fire -- Appendices: -- Reality Mining -- Openpds -- Fast, Slow, And Free Will -- Math -- Notes -- References -- Index.