Long Before Cambridge Analytica, Simulmatics Linked Data and Politics (npr.org) 9
NPR reporter Shannon Bond reports of a little-known -- and now nearly entirely forgotten -- company called Simulmatics, which had technology that used vast amounts of data to profile voters and ultimately help John F. Kennedy win the 1960 election. From the report: The [...] company was called Simulmatics, the subject of Harvard historian and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore's timely new book, If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future. Before Cambridge Analytica, before Facebook, before the Internet, there was Simulmatics' "People Machine," in Lepore's telling: "A computer program designed to predict and manipulate human behavior, all sorts of human behavior, from buying a dishwasher to countering an insurgency to casting a vote."
Lepore unearths Simulmatics' story and makes the argument that, amid a broader proliferation of behavioral science research across academia and government in the 1960s, the company paved the way for our 21st-century obsession with data and prediction. Simulmatics, she argues, is "a missing link in the history of technology," the antecedent to Facebook, Google and Amazon and to algorithms that attempt to forecast who will commit crimes or get good grades. "It lurks behind the screen of every device," she writes.
If Then presents Simulmatics as both ahead of its time and, more often than not, overpromising and under-delivering. The company was the brainchild of Ed Greenfield, an advertising executive straight out of Mad Men, who believed computers could help Democrats recapture the White House. He wanted to create a model of the voting population that could tell you how voters would respond to whatever a candidate did or said. The name Simulmatics was a contraction of "simulation" and "automation." As Greenfield explained it to investors, Lepore writes: "The Company proposes to engage principally in estimating probable human behavior by the use of computer technology." The People Machine was originally built to analyze huge amounts of data ahead of the 1960 election, in what Lepore describes as, at the time, "the largest political science research project in American history."
Lepore unearths Simulmatics' story and makes the argument that, amid a broader proliferation of behavioral science research across academia and government in the 1960s, the company paved the way for our 21st-century obsession with data and prediction. Simulmatics, she argues, is "a missing link in the history of technology," the antecedent to Facebook, Google and Amazon and to algorithms that attempt to forecast who will commit crimes or get good grades. "It lurks behind the screen of every device," she writes.
If Then presents Simulmatics as both ahead of its time and, more often than not, overpromising and under-delivering. The company was the brainchild of Ed Greenfield, an advertising executive straight out of Mad Men, who believed computers could help Democrats recapture the White House. He wanted to create a model of the voting population that could tell you how voters would respond to whatever a candidate did or said. The name Simulmatics was a contraction of "simulation" and "automation." As Greenfield explained it to investors, Lepore writes: "The Company proposes to engage principally in estimating probable human behavior by the use of computer technology." The People Machine was originally built to analyze huge amounts of data ahead of the 1960 election, in what Lepore describes as, at the time, "the largest political science research project in American history."
World on a Wire (Score:1)
I wonder if Simulmatics was the basis for World on a Wire -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] -- which basically Matrix'ed and 13'th Floor'ed before everybody else?
Because in World on a Wire, it's a simulation on human beings and their environment, specifically for predicting business needs and such.
Re: (Score:3)
I wonder if Simulmatics was the basis for World on a Wire -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] -- which basically Matrix'ed and 13'th Floor'ed before everybody else?
Because in World on a Wire, it's a simulation on human beings and their environment, specifically for predicting business needs and such.
Per your link, it was actually based on Simulacron-3 [wikipedia.org], so it'd be more sensible to wonder if Simulacron-3 was inspired by Simulmatics.
Re: (Score:2)
Asimov's Foundation series and the concept of psychohistory came in 1951. I'm wondering if Ed Greenfield was inspired by it. In fact, Asimov wrote a story called Franchise [wikipedia.org] which was about a computer that predicted (and thus negated the need for) elections based on a single person's input.
What a load of bullshit (Score:3)
Computers in those days could barely run statistics over all the country's zip codes much less create an extensive database of voter information for manipulation.
More likely this was a confidence scheme selling psuedo-science snake oil solutions.
The fact several books, television shows and movies involving similar schemes came out in the same time frame probably helped them sell the con.
Contraction of what now? (Score:3)
Clearly, the man Englished as poorly as he programmed.
That was a slower, more sedate time then, where it took a decade for someone to try to bring Isaac Asimov's Foundation novels, and in particular "psychohistory", to a commercial scheme.
more comprehensive article (Score:3)
https://www.newyorker.com/maga... [newyorker.com]
read it a few weeks ago. was a solid article. The author of the book is a writer for the new yorker.
Re: (Score:1)
Today's democrats would gnash their teeth and rend their garments in response to JFK if he were to run today.