The federally-funded cloud-based crime prediction software known as PREDPOL, uses mathematical algorithms similar to ones used in earthquake prediction to predict when and where a future crime is most likely to take place down to a 500-square foot area. The program combines five years’ worth of past crime data with sociological information about criminal behavior.

Ref: Seattle Police Deploy Crime Prediction Software City-Wide – SecretsOfTheFed

Speaking to Businessweek, Croen said, “If this is done well, we’ll create the experience of talking to a real human being.”

It’s not hard to see how far the technology could go. Anyone who is an expert could virtualize themselves through video to address user questions as a way of promoting themselves. Beyond simply advice seeking, fans could also download their favorite musician, writer, or movie star and conduct virtual interviews that feel like real experiences. It’s hard not to think of an industry that couldn’t utilize this tech — even politicians could utilize it to get their message across or communicate their stance to constituents.

Ref: Smartphone App Lets You Carry Human Experts Around In Your Pocket – Singularity HUB

A transformation is happening.

People, like you, are taking control of something conventional wisdom has told us is not ours to understand: our health. Why are we fat? What makes us feel sluggish? What causes our disease? How can I improve? Today, we ask our doctors. Tomorrow, we will ask our data.

Watch Ari Meisel explain how he cured his Crohn’s disease by following data. Here’s Larry Smarr doing it as well. Even Tim Ferriss tracks data in his life to hack his way to better health.

This is the Quantified Self. In short, it is self-knowledge through self-tracking.

The only difference today is the technology. Advancements have not only made data collection cheaper and more convenient, but is allowing us to quantify biometrics we never knew existed. Want to know your insulin or cortisol levels, or sequence your DNA, or learn what microbial cells inhabit your body? You can quantify that now.

Self-trackers are pushing the limits of personal health. By using a scientific approach, they are shedding light into a dark unknown. As they discover hidden insights, it is the entrepreneurs who are bringing their findings—and their tools—to the masses.

As self-trackers are pushing the movement forward, entrepreneurs are helping it scale.

Ref: The Beginner’s Guide to Quantified Self – Technori

[…] Asprey’s significant others haven’t escaped his drive for data. At night, he and his wife strap Zeo sleep bands on their foreheads to track the quality of their rest, and they have started sleeping in separate beds several nights a week to avoid disturbing each other’s rest. He encourages husbands to track their wives’ ovulation cycles along with the frequency of their fights to better understand what disrupts marital bliss. In a previous relationship, Asprey tracked everything his girlfriend ingested, then correlated it with her moods.

The goal is self and spouse improvement by gathering personal data that can reveal unseen patterns and bad habits, explains Asprey, who runs a blog chronicling his efforts to “hack” his body and mind.

“Data brings you the power to change your relationship, and that’s huge,” Asprey said.

[…]

Elliott Hedman, a graduate student at the MIT Media Lab, affixed skin conductance sensors to a date he took to a classical music concert in order to track her physiological reaction to the music. The data, which revealed the young woman’s lack of enthusiasm for the concert, allowed for a more honest and specific conversation about the experience than would have been possible without it, Hedman argued. Instead of exchanging generic pleasantries about the concert or masking their true opinions to spare the other’s feelings, they could dive into details and use data — an impartial judge — to be straightforward about how they’d each perceived the event.

“Even more than discovering hidden secrets, the data is actually just providing a tool for communication,” said Hedman. “When we’re talking about a graph — about data and numbers, not personal opinions — we can be more honest with each other. It’s less accusing. It removes the personal feelings.”

Ref: The Quantified Spouse Movement Has Couples Tracking Weight, Sleep And Even Orgasms To Find Bliss – Huffington Post
Ref: Love is a journey. And we’re the GPS. – Medstart

Instead of intentional online connections, […] Behavio, looks at how peoples’ location, network of phone contacts, physical proximity, and movement throughout the day can help us predict range of behaviors — anything from fitness to app downloads to mass protests.

—

“We are very excited to announce that the Behavio team is now a part of Google!” Behavio announced on its website today.

“At Behavio, we have always been passionate about helping people better understand the world around them,” the post continued. “We believe that our digital experiences should be better connected with the way we experience the world, and we couldn’t be happier to be able to continue building out our vision within Google.”

Ref: Google Acquires Social Prediction Startup Behavio – MobileMarketingWatch

Let us begin with technology’s growing ability to manipulate how much information we have about the world around us. Google glasses and soon pixelated contact lenses will allow us to augment reality with a layer of data. Future versions may provide a more intrusive view, such as sensing your vital signs and stress level. Such augmentation has the potential to empower us with a feeling of enhanced access to “reality.” Whether or not this represents truth, however, is elusive. Consider the opposite of augmented reality: “deletive reality.” If pedestrians in New York or Mumbai don’t want to see homeless people, they could delete them from view in real-time. This not only diminishes the diversity of reality; it also blocks us from developing empathy.

[…]

The combination of cloud-based data, devices, and software that allow us to search and share, and artificial intelligence capable of semantic understanding heralds the rise of a collective intelligence. The Internet, Jeffrey Stibel argues, is not just becoming like a brain. It is a brain: It ingests data, processes them, and “provides answers without knowing questions.” As our cognitive processes are increasingly shared with devices, networks, and the physical environment, our sense of self increasingly morphs to become the sum of our connections and relationships. Rather than one single identity, we each have a personal identity ecologycombining our real and virtual selves and our semantic links floating in the global mind (“Noosphere”). Google’s Sergey Brin calls this having “the entire world’s knowledge connected directly to your mind.”

Ref: Welcome to the Hybrid Age – Slate