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You know it's a cold, frosty morning when the car windscreen is frozen on the inside. It took 15 minutes before I could see enough to drive.

Liked: Is society coming apart? | Society | The Guardian...

An MIT political scientist named Ithiel de Sola Pool coined the expression “social network” in 1957, founding a field that he called “small world” studies. Two years later, he founded the Simulmatics Corporation. Its name was a portmanteau, and its purpose was to automate the computer simulation of human behaviour in order to make predictions that it could sell to corporations and governments; it was, in short, the first artificial intelligence-driven data services company. In the 1960s, De Sola Pool made a series of predictions about what would worry people in our day, about society. “In the 21st century, the sort of critic who now attacks conformity in society may be complaining of an atomized society,” he predicted in 1968. “Modern technology, he'll assert, has destroyed our common cultural base and has left us living in a little world of his own.”