Music Think

Apparently we have a fascination for being snookered into thinking something is good based upon an algorithm. This is just new window dressing on an old idea: it's called pop culture.

"Professor Yuval Shavitt, of Tel Aviv University's School of Electric Engineering, is melding math and sociology to describe mass behavior on the Internet. He is the principal investigator of DIMES, a project that hopes to map the structure and topology of the Internet, begun four years ago. And for the past year, he has used data-mining tools to collect and interpret massive amounts of data from file-sharing networks. By applying a decades-old sociological theory that describes the spread of information in social networks to the online world, he has been able to develop a predictive algorithm that identifies musicians who will ascend from local popularity to national stardom."

[12/14/2024: Persuasion, the secret sell, the secret sauce, all a part of capitalist marketing. Just the tools are different and evermore effective].