:: Societal mood ring ::

Wednesday, September 24, 2003

First, Slashdot posts a review of Robert Prechter's new book on socionomics, then Stewart Butterfield addresses the speculation raging over whether or not Google plans to acquire Friendster. Quite the day for social networks it seems. Much to digest.

The review of Prechter's work raises the issue of the need for solid methodology to be developed in order for socionomics to transition into a respectable scientific discipline. From what I can glean off of Prechter's site, many of his postulations rely on limited data sets (this may be intentional, but without any methodological clarity I cannot tell). Data indicative of "social mood" are few, far between, and beset with interference, at least as they stand now. Prechter primarily relies on stock market charts to derive a direct causal relationship between this mood (as evinced by movies, political races, mass reactions to power blackouts) and the performance of several key financial indicators. This is a start, but such consistency leave him prone to claims of assertion-by-least-resistance and, if not esotericism, than at least over-reliance.

Until he can prove this to be a robust phenomenon by way of a broad range of analysis, socionomics will occupy the hinterlands of coffee-table pseudoscience.

Now to return to the other development I mentioned above - is it me, or would a Google/Friendster pairing provide a cornucopia of information from which to mature the methodology, and hence conclusions, of socionomics? Perhaps they could re-brand as "Zeitgeister"?

Posted by morland @ 04:07 PM

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