1. Social Physics and Big Data
Professor emeritus, Agora Center
University of Jyväskylä
Consulting Sustainable Innovation
Antti.Hautamaki(at)kolumbus.fi

2. What is wrong with social sciences?
• Social sciences does not help us to understand
modern digital (post-industrial and post-modern)
society
• Theories of social sciences are so ”last century”
• There has not been real progress in social sciences
in decades
• Still the methodology is based either case studies or
interviews; big data is not used enough
• Major challenge is how to bridge the gap between
used methodology and possibilities of big data
• New mathematical methods have to develop

3. Social Physics (Alex Pentland)
• ”Social physics seeks to understand how the flow of
ideas and information translates into changes in
behavior”.
• Big data about human behavior drives social
physics.
• Big data reveals how people in fact interact and
communicate.
• Big data is got by reality mining in living labs:
internet and social media, calls records, credit cards
transactions, GPS location fixes etc.
• + Big data collecting by sociometric badges.
Alex Pentland: Social Physics, 2014

4. Sociometric badge

5. Two basic concepts of social physics
• Idea flow within social networks, and how it
con be separated into exploration and
engagement
• Social learning, which is how new ideas
become habits, and how learning can be
accelerated and shaped by social pressure.

6. Social learning
• Social learning is a dominant mechanism of behavior
change.
• We all lives in idea flow
• Exploration is a process to find new ideas in social
networks.
• Engagement is social learning taking form of
behavioral norms: adopting norms by examples,
iteration and social pressure
• In social physics the social influence is analyzed by
using big data and mathematical tools (it’s “physics”)
• The content of believes turn to be not so important for
explaining societal changes

7. The process of social learning
Interaction Idea flow
Exploration
New ideas
New believes
Engagement
Adopting ideas
New habits
New
behaviour

8. Social learning process
Intraction
Influence
New ideas New habits
Network effect/time
Exporation
Weak links
Engagment
Strong links
Pressure

9. Innovation
• In innovation two things are necessary:
1. To have access to idea flows
2. To be capable to integrate new ideas to the DNA
of the organization
• Innovations are combinations of different
ideas
• Weak links open access to new ideas
• Strong links enforce adopting ideas
A.Hautamäki & K. Oksanen (2012): Suuntana innovaatiokeskittymä

10. Benefits of Social Physics
• We can apply big data and exact mathematical
tools
• Results are “objective” reflecting how people in
fact behave and change their behavior
• We could uncover the real connections between
innovation and different patterns of behavior and
communication
• In general we could understand accurately the
mechanism of change in society
• Finally: a new theory of society is emerging