Big data and the limits of social engineering

The following review of Alex Pentland’s bookSocial Physics appeared originally, in a slightly different form, in MIT Technology Review.

In 1969, Playboy published a long, freewheeling interview with Marshall McLuhan in which the media theorist and sixties icon sketched a portrait of the future that was at once seductive and repellent. Noting the ability of digital computers to analyze data and communicate messages, McLuhanpredicted that the machines eventually would be deployed to fine-tune...