The Shirt Safe lets you hide your valuables in plain sight
http://pd.gophercentral.com/u/1102/c/186/a/618
------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
That Middle East Uprisings Say About Online Marketing
By Jaffer Ali
"Despite our best intentions, the system is sufficiently
dysfunctional that intelligence failure is guaranteed."
From The Coming Intelligence Failure, Defense Intelligence
Agency analysis
Middle East politics and online marketing are two of my
passions. Whenever I get a chance to combine the two in
one article, I gladly take the opportunity.
Unless you have been living in a cave, you know that
there are major uprising going on in Tunisia, Egypt,
Yemen, Bahrain, Libya and Iran. With the exception of
Iran where Western support for protesters involves
financial subsidies, http://nyti.ms/dTfWpV none of
these organic protests were predicted.
Israel's vaunted Game Theory http://bit.ly/hiOoTG and the
overwhelming data mining techniques of the CIA have failed
MISERABLY to predict the most massive events in modern
Middle East history. Nassim Taleb would label these
uprisings "Black Swan" events ? occurrences that deviate
beyond what is normally expected of a situation and that
are extremely difficult to predict.
A simple question to ask is; "If our predictive modeling
methodologies cannot foretell major, cataclysmic events,
what value do these tools really have?"
The simple answer is not much.
------------------------------------------------------------
YOUR VIDEO SNACK BAR
Top Viewed Videos...
1. I Could Get Used To This
http://c.gophercentral.com/ZlTW
2. Who Knew? Amazing Elephants
http://c.gophercentral.com/iJzz
3. The Spanish Civil War
http://c.gophercentral.com/wn3U
4. Cab Calloway
http://c.gophercentral.com/je2A
5. The Amazing Jennifer Hudson
http://c.gophercentral.com/0QXS
6. Grizzle Bears In Alaska
http://c.gophercentral.com/Z70x
------------------------------------------------------------
Think of the US government's investment in Mubarak. This
is not a hypothetical because we invested in him for 30
years, as we did the Shah of Iran from 1953 to 1979.
Mubarak and the Shah paid off huge dividends while they
reigned. Much like the huge dividends we have reaped
through our support of the Bahraini, Saudi and Kuwaiti
monarchies.
But these investments turn potentially toxic when we
continue to pour money into them because we cannot predict
the Black Swan. In essence, the Middle East is experiencing
a political market crash. This analogy rings true in light
of recent experience that proved data methodologies incap-
able of predicting, let alone preventing, a global stock
meltdown.
And this is the point that behavioral targeters and those
supporting this pseudo science refuse to acknowledge. These
models invariably ? and cataclysmically ? fail when you
need them most! The CIA has computers capable of doing 10
trillion calculations per second that use the SAME DATA
MINING AND PREDICTIVE METHODOLOGIES favored by stock-market
mathematicians. The CIA uses the SAME DATA MINING AND
PREDITIVE METHODOLOGIES touted by online behavioral-target-
ing marketers.
If you want to make a fool fail, give him information.
--Nassim Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes
Marketers with significant skin in the media investment
game should heed this warning: the more you "bet" on these
failed methodologies, the more you are at risk when the
Black Swan rears its predictably unpredictable head. If
you continue to measure more and more about less and
less, and rely on algorithmic reduction to predict human
behavior, the only certainty is that you will fail. And
you won't realize it until it happens.
------------------------------------------------------------
Jaffer Ali is the CEO of the video snack network,
Vidsense and e-commerce company PulseTV.com. He can
be reached easily the old fashioned way, give him a
call at 708-478-4500.
------------------------------------------------------------
Questions? Comments? Email me at: quote (at) Quotes2u.com
------------------------------------------------------------
Follow Your Favorite GopherCentral Publications on Twitter:
http://www.gophertweets.com/ More Coming Soon!
------------------------------------------------------------