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
Tag: attention_capture
Pilgrims were on an economic venture
English venture capitalists funded the pilgrims. Pilgrims had to provide material (fur, fish, forests) for seven years to return that investment. Then, capitalists gave the pilgrims a deed to the land. A deed that the Crown provided, but had no jurisdiction over.
Pilgrims had to survive and thrive to pay back the investment. They ended up incurring and capturing native land and so shrank natives’ place in the world.
For more, watch this PBS Newshour feature: Were pilgrims America’s first economic migrants?