Database of dreams
Subtitle: the lost quest to catalog humanity
By: Rebecca Lemov
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 354
ISBN-13: 9780300209525
Subjects: History; Sociology; Psychology; Big data; Data processing; Dreams; Research
Description: Just a few years before the dawn of the digital age, Harvard psychologist Bert Kaplan set out to build the largest database of sociological information ever assembled. It was the mid-1950s, and social scientists were entranced by the human insights promised by Rorschach tests and other innovative scientific protocols. Kaplan, along with anthropologist A. I. Hallowell and a team of researchers, sought out a varied range of non-European subjects-among remote and non-literate peoples around the globe and elsewhere. Recording their dreams, stories, and innermost thoughts in a vast database, Kaplan envisioned future researchers accessing the data through the cutting-edge Readex machine. Almost immediately, however, technological developments and the obsolescence of the theoretical framework rendered the project irrelevant, and eventually it was forgotten. In a scrupulously researched and captivating new book, Rebecca Lemov recounts the story of Kaplan's quest and brings to light an informative and disturbing chapter in the prehistory of Big Data.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: Paperwork of the Inner Self; title: The Varieties of Not Belonging; title: The Storage of the Very, Very Small; title: Data Mining in Zuni; title: Possible Future Worlds; title: The Double Experiment; title: "I Do Not Want Secrets. ... I Only Want Your Dreams"; title: Not Fade Away (A History of the Life History); title: New Encyclopedias Will Arise; title: Brief Golden Age; title: Conclusion.