The flow of information, and the restriction or shaping of that flow,
have always been crucial to balances of power. In the 15th century,
movable type paved the way for the Enlightenment; mass literacy and
numeracy were engines of social change; the internet is the bane of
repressive states, and rapidly modernising societies struggle to
maintainequilibrium as they come to terms with it. In the long run,
extensions of data access will work their way down to individual level
and meet the universally available computing power. In a time of
globalisation, that sets the scene for data analytic outlooks to
produce a similar revolution in social structure whose outcome is
impossible to guess.

http://www.scientific-computing.com/features/feature.php?feature_id=192

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