The new science of crowds
It’s now possible to model, to a reasonable degree of accuracy, crowd behaviour. The way that a crowd of people can exit an large space through a confined exit, or how traffic builds up around a sporting event are fairly predictable. Of course, these approaches rely on modelling human behaviour, a modelling that can never be fully accurate (that being a feature of a model).
I believe that crowd theory is inherently pernicious because it fundamentally relies on a simplified model of individual behavior. I’m not saying these models aren’t useful, or don’t offer real predictive accuracy. They are and they do. But by treating people as statistical stick-figures, we cheapen ourselves and, somehow, become less human. (via .csv: group think)
More and more, these sorts of models will find themselves in the back-ends of everyday technology. When these models feature in everyday technology, they won’t just be predictive, they’ll be imperative. So, more and more, we will have the choice of, perhaps uncritically, going with the model, or pushing back against it. Good design will allow that sort of push-back. Bad design will not only make it difficult, or disallow it, but it will impose penalties for going against the model.
We’re more predictable than we like to think we are. But, occasionally, we will defy prediction. I hope our technology lets us.
