I’m going to take two very different ideas and meld them together in that fusion that is best achieved by way of science-fiction.

First, consider how fortunate we were at the founding of theUnited States. Everyone learns that George Washington refuted the idea that he should make himself King after the revolution. The country was in disarray, the 13 states were sniping at each other and things looked bleak when former officers representing the army indicated toWashingtonthat the army would support him if he made a bid create a monarchy on this continent. Horrified,Washingtonnot only rejected their suggestion, chastising them for it, he wondered what had he done to give them the idea he would entertain such thoughts. It wasn’t simply our first President that was our good fortune. Our founding fathers, brilliant, ambitious, idealistic and flawed men made no serious attempts to seize this new nation for their own enrichment. This is so unheard of after revolution as to be nearly unheard of. Today we despair that the ‘Arab Spring’ has not produced healthy democracies in less than a year, forgetting just how tenuous our own national birthing turned out to be.

Last week I read a new story about how Target knew that a teenage girl was pregnant before her father knew the news. Target, in a bid to move maternity products,  data mines their customers’ purchases, looking for the indicators that a woman is expecting, and once identified they send her targeted adverts and flyers. In this case they had correctly identified an expectant teen mother, just simply before she had worked up the courage to admit her state to her father.

Data Mining is the process of combing through tons of information, often disparate and unrelated types of information looking for subtle patterns that can reveal new facts about the target. As Target demonstrated it can be very effective and by far it is more than just advertisers that are pouring resources into this computation heavy process. The government uses data mining to ferret out terrorists and other law breakers. The term data mining conjures up a long, laborious, and intensive process, like men deep in the earth braving lethal dangers as they quest for precious minerals, but what starts outs dangerous, difficult, and expensive, especially where computers are concerned, becomes easy, cheap, and ubiquitous.

 What happens if data mining becomes cheap, easy, and available to the public? A great deal of information about our lives already lives in a number of public and private databases, and what might not be considered private information could be used to produce privacy penetrating results.

In the movie GATACA people are seen using covertly obtained genetic samples to investigate potential employees and lovers, for more useful and actionable results are possible with data mining. If you want to know if someone is trustworthy I don’t think that information is going to found in the genome, but we all have on-line histories, countless pages of text we have written, images we have commented on and posted, things we have liked, disliked, opposed and supported. Together with all manner of other data that could be mined to produce a picture not only of our consumer habits, but also our psychological make-up, what kind of person we are beyond shopping.

Of course the potential goes far beyond rooting out terrorists and two-timing lovers. Imagine the power of this sort of data mining in the courts, say in the selection of jurors. Already a great deal of time, research, and energy goes into trying to pick the right jurors for your case, which is not the same as picking jurors that will arrive at the truth. For the defense all they need is one juror to hold out and then they can prevent a guilty verdict. With this sort of intelligence they might very well be able to cripple our criminal justice system. Of course this sort of data mining could also expose secrets; Larry Craig might have been exposed long before a random bust in an airport restroom. Opposition research becomes a precision tool, instead if a crude club.

Clearly this has tremendous potential to disrupt our way of life, but I see upsides and fantastic possibilities as well.

Let’s return to the top of the essay, where I commented on the incredible fortune we lucked upon at the birth of our country, that our founder fathers had lives, fortunes and most of all, sacred honor to pledge to us. How many of our current political leaders would you describe as honorable?

What if we could sort the vain, the greedy, and the dishonorable from our pool of candidates? How might that improve our system of governance? In so many critical careers our society could be incomparably improved not by forcing people into roles unsuited for them, but illuminating the best who already want to serve. Selecting jurors for their honor and dedication to truth, teachers for passion for imparting the best skills and knowledge, civil servants and police for a desire to serve instead of a weakness for power and temptation, this is also possible.