Gutenberg had no idea that his printing press would result
in the publishing of more than 120 million book titles. Watson’s steam engine led
to an industrial revolution that has given us practically everything we define
as civilization today, climate-changing carbon footprint included. Add to this the advent of computers, and the more
recent Internet explosion, and it’s not hard to conclude that every major human
advance of the last centuries has been driven by a confluence of diverse
factors combining in unexpected ways to create brand new technological and
cultural spaces. Version 1.0 of the Digital
Age is so twentieth century when compared with how key developments for Platform, Access, and Information are now
converging. Enter
the emerging field of Social Sentience.
Platform is the
result of the evolution of computer systems toward the concept of
infrastructure-as-a-commodity. The system engineering techniques of
virtualization, clustering, and abstraction of layered services now allow the sharing
of gigantic Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) computer system farms known as “the
cloud”.
When it comes to access, the increased pervasiveness of mobility, network access, and continued miniaturization and cost reductions as predicated by Moore’s Law are coalescing into the more recently hyped “Internet of Things”. We should not be surprised to see more and more personal biometric devices and appliances seamlessly connecting people with computers. We are entering an era of pervasive access to information; an Infosphere, where ultimately we will remain connected at all times, and the devices used to connect will no longer need to be personal, but will instead be embedded in our environment.
When it comes to access, the increased pervasiveness of mobility, network access, and continued miniaturization and cost reductions as predicated by Moore’s Law are coalescing into the more recently hyped “Internet of Things”. We should not be surprised to see more and more personal biometric devices and appliances seamlessly connecting people with computers. We are entering an era of pervasive access to information; an Infosphere, where ultimately we will remain connected at all times, and the devices used to connect will no longer need to be personal, but will instead be embedded in our environment.
The recent emergence of social media, along with the explosive
online participation of over a billion people across the globe, has resulted in
the creation of huge amounts of data. It is estimated that 2.5 Exabytes of data
are generated everyday (you would need to buy one billion 1Gb thumb drives at Costco
to get an Exabyte). The potential value of mining this data has provided
the economic justification to trigger advances in information and knowledge technologies:
- Data Science that deals primarily with leveraging data for more specific predictive analytics purposes that can be applied to recommendation engines, logistic regression, spam filters, fraud detection, and forecasting. In many ways, Data Science can be viewed as a more comprehensive form of traditional data analytics based on SQL based OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) data warehouses.
- On the other hand, Cognitive Computing deals with algorithms that learn and interact naturally with people. Also, while Data Science deals with explicit data, Cognitive Computing creates implicit information by applying heuristics for inference reasoning that exploit hidden patterns and correlations found in big data sets. The results might appear magical. Perhaps the most well-known example is the IBM Watson technology that was capable a few years back of winning a Jeopardy competition against top human players.
- Collective Intelligence, also known as “Wisdom of the Crowds” (WOC), deals with the mechanisms that gather the combined input of millions of people in social media communities. Analysis of social networks is emerging as an ancillary element to help identify social influencers and relationships. WOC can be leveraged by mining the millions of reviews and comments entered daily on sites such as Yelp, TripAdvisor, among others, and also by evaluating and capturing explicit advice and comments posted on blogs and social communication sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
What is Social Sentience?
Well, the dictionary defines sentience as “responsive to or conscious of sense impressions” or as “finely sensitive
in perception or feeling”. The convergence of all the previously mentioned
advances will lead to a surrounding social environment that can become sentient
in the truest form of these definitions. This Infosphere will automatically
leverage all the above technologies to give you access to information and
resources that represent the best summarization of the combined societal
knowledge, but with a highly personalized interaction. Social Sentience will
act as your very own personal advisor.
So, what would a Social Sentience engagement look like? Today, when you get a recommendation from Netflix
or Amazon, chances are that their algorithm bases its recommendation on your
history or the history of people who have used similar products in the past.
This is but a glimmer of things to come.
With Social Sentience, the “engine” will continuously monitor
the environment around you—things like your location, the time of day, the
current and forecasted weather, and your exercise level. The engine will continuously match this
environment to your known and inferred preferences and, depending on your
choices, it will proactively provide you with advice and recommendations.
Imagine this scenario, you are walking the downtown and
reach the proximity of a seafood restaurant that the Social Sentience engine discovers
was visited by one of your Facebook friends (you respect this friend since you
have “liked” most of her comments), and who has entered a positive Yelp comment regarding
the food. Since it is lunchtime (in the
near future, bio-sensors could track whether you are due for a meal), the
engine will trigger a message pointing out the nearby restaurant.
Previously, the
engine first checked your food preferences—after all, if you don’t like fish,
your friend’s recommendation will not matter—and also validated your
appointments and credit card balance to ensure you have the time and the
pockets to eat there. The resulting experience,
the quality of the recommendations and advice, as well as the timeliness and
relevance, will be a quantum leap over what you are experiencing today.
In other words, Social Sentience will give you an array of offers,
opportunities, and choices, which will be highly curated around your specific
tastes and preferences (many of these inferred via machine learning
algorithms), as well as taking into consideration the tastes and preferences of
your social circle. This view will be contextual (are you on business or on
vacation?) as well as appropriate to the time and circumstances.
As you can see, having a Social Sentience system that
delivers these capabilities involves an integrated use of the three fundamental
tracks I’ve mentioned. I am not talking
about more esoteric “artificial intelligence” topics, although a Social
Sentience engine like the one described here may appear to be “intelligent”.
What lies on the horizon is not outside the realm of current
technology. The actual challenges come from valid socio-political and cultural
concerns. Things could get Orwellian very
quickly. How can we ensure that this type of service does not transgress upon well-established
privacy expectations? And then there is
certainly the question of safe-guarding what’s being tracked, as well as the
wealth of information mined from your behaviors and consumer patterns. Clearly, protections against security
breaches by hackers and others will also be a major issue. It must be said that
most of these issues are already surfacing in light of how Google, Facebook,
and other social media sites are gathering tons of data about you even as we
speak. My own view is that the ultimate solution will have to come with actual
legislation that takes into account the current world we live in by delivering
us a much-needed Digital Bill of Rights.
Perhaps as we finally elect more and more technological-savvy representatives,
this will come to pass.