Simulmatics’ legacy endures in predictive analytics, what-if simulation and behavioral data science. It lurks behind the screen of every device. Simulmatics [a 1960s corporation that helped JFK’s presidential campaign], notwithstanding its own failure, helped invent the data mad, a near-totalitarian 21st century, in which the only knowledge that counts is prediction, and corporations extract wealth by way of the collection of data and the manipulation of attention and the profit of prophecy.
Jill Lepore on NPR