30 | New Scientist | 24 October 2020
Views Culture
Books
If Then: How the
Simulmatics Corporation
invented the future
Jill Lepore
W. W. Nor tonThe Hype Machine: How
social media disrupts our
elections, our economy,
and our health – and how
we must adapt
Sinan Aral
Penguin Random HouseIN SEPTEMBER 2016, Alexander
Nix, CEO of Cambridge Analytica,
told an audience in New York
about the power of big data
in global elections. Know the
personality of the people you
target, and “you can nuance your
messaging to resonate more
effectively” with them, he said.
That London-based political
consultancy was behind the Brexit
Leave campaign. And it offered the
Trump team a model to predict
the personality of individual
voters in the 2016 US election.
Another shiny product of 21st-
century data science? No. As early
as 1960, a US firm used prediction
analytics to help elect a president.
In If Then, Harvard historian Jill
Lepore tells that riveting story.
In 1959, Simulmatics was set
up in New York. It was to lay the
foundations of a world in which
algorithms attempt to forecast
and influence our every move
by simulating our very selves.
Simulmatics founder Ed
Greenfield brought in behavioural
scientists, technologists, pollsters
and statisticians. The idea:
collect enough data on enough
people, feed it into a machine
and everything will be predictable.
Minds will be simulated, acts
anticipated, and even driven,his telegenic personality and
charisma alone didn’t carry the
race. His team denied getting
help from any “electronic brain”,
but Simulmatics’s reports are in
the archives at the John F. Kennedy
Presidential Library and Museum,
Lepore writes.
After the elections, Simulmatics
took on new projects, but was
limited by 1960s technology.
In 1970, it declared bankruptcy.
It lives on in science fiction novel
Simulacron-3 and film adaptation
World on a Wire, itself a forerunner
of 1999 cult classic The Matrix.
By the 21st century, information
about individuals was abundant,
accessible and easier to process
with faster computers. Social
media connected millions, then
billions – all exchanging messages
guided by algorithms designed to
inform, entertain and manipulate.
Its sheer power helped those
early dreams to grow and
prosper in unimaginable ways.
In The Hype Machine, Sinan Aral
at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology examines the science
behind this disruptive power.
He outlines his own research into
Twitter, which has shown how
fake news penetrates further and
faster than accurate information.
The more shocking, salacious and
emotionally arousing (especially
fake political news), the more
we are moved to spread it.
In 2014, Russia’s Internet
Research Agency set up accounts
on platforms including Facebook
and Twitter to sway US voters
with fake news. This was “one
of the most comprehensive
weaponizations of misinformation
the world has ever seen”, says Aral.
But it still had to target the right
misinformation at the right
voters. Cambridge Analytica’s
model, built using Facebook
data, helped to predict voter
personality. Russian fake newsby targeted messages.
The scientists compiled data
from election returns and public
opinion surveys going back to- Then they built a computer
simulation of the 1960 election
on which to test scenarios about
an endlessly customisable
population. Using the if/then
formula of computer language
Fortran, they could model any
move a candidate might make and
track voter response down to the
tiniest segment of the electorate.
Dubbed the “People Machine”,
this simulation predicted that
to win, John F. Kennedy needed
the black vote. He took a
strong position on civil rights.
It also advised him to confront
religious prejudice and win
minority support by being upfront
about his own Catholicism.
Today, Kennedy’s victory might
look like a forgone conclusion, but
John F. Kennedy
campaigning in Mayville,
Wisconsin, in March 1960ST
AN
WAYMAN/THE^ LIFE
PI
CT
URE^ COL
LE
CT
IONVIAGETTY^ IMAGESBig data’s first election victory
During the cold war, big data was secretly used to help elect President Kennedy,
finds Vijaysree Venkatraman. Now it is used to rig elections via social media“ Fake news penetrates
further and faster
than accurate
information
on Twitter”