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In defence of newspapers and serendipity
I expect we'll see lots of bloggers trotting out their high school math without really understanding the limitations of the techniques.
These "the end of X" proclamations are wrong so much of the time it's basically useless to make them. Does Chris Anderson really want to make the same argument that so many Doomsday cults for the last 2000 years have been making? It's so over the top that I suspect he sensationalized it on purpose to garner attention.
I started to write an increasingly long comment here after reading this, then went and stuck it at http://www.bitcurrent.com/does-big-search-chang... instead.
Besides, this way I got to post a Google LOLcat ad.
Thanks for getting me thinking!
However it seemed to me he's making a more reasonable and subtle point than a wrong suggestion that correlation=causation.
Generally science bases descriptions of behavior or biology or other phenomena on data *samples*. As the sample size approaches 100% our models become closer to the full reality rather than just a model of that reality. I don't agree that we are anywhere near the point of having enough data to do much more than target ads a little better, but in the areas where we have huge data sets I think we will start to find that Google analysis may be able to predict and describe things better than any previous models.
Far more significant will be conscious computing, which is likely to change the game for everything and everybody almost as soon as that Genie's out of the bottle - probably in about 15 years.