The Numerati

I just finished a really interesting book by Stephen Baker called The Numerati.  He gives a great overview of the way that data is dominating our online and offline lives and what marketers, governments and businesses are doing with this data and where it's heading.  My favorite chapter was Blogger, where he describes how the algorithms to track and understand the blogosphere are built and refined with human assistance.  Other great chapters and topics were Shopper (for anyone interested in online ad targeting), Patient (technology to assist the eldery) and Terrorist (including how hard it is for the government to compete for the brightest math minds).  Lots of interesting facts, such as shoppers forget an average of 11% of the items they intended to buy, and that 87% of the population can be pinpointed by name by knowing only their gender, date of birth and zip code.   He covers lots of people and companies like Dave Morgan and Technorati, and has a really enjoyable writing style.  Definitely worth a read.