The Numerati

Great, quick read about how our every move is tracked online and off, how technology is slowly gaining sophistication in piecing our identity puzzle together. Parsed into seven chapters, Baker talks through how the Numerati (quants who crunch the numbers looking to identify patterns and market to them) are helping to change the workplace (more efficient workers rewarded), shopping (smart grocery carts that identify your needs/wants and lure you into discounts), polling places (segments of voters can be communicated with a different message than a TV ad that blasts to all), hospital & dating scene.

Our lives are increasingly monitored, and we feed data into the machine with every click, every mouse hover, every blog post, every Facebook status update. We're at the cusp of sophisticated targeted marketing across all our lives (instead of just online).