This is one of nearly a thousand foresight statements shared by people from around the world. To return to the Voices of the People home page or to refine your search, click here.
Name: Eric Ding
From: Massachusetts
Bio: Epidemiologist-- biostatistical researcher of large electronic biomedical databases of human health
Area of Expertise: Research Scientist/Illuminator
Topic: Getting, Sharing Information
Headline: Epidemiologic and biostatistical modeling to determine causality in human society
Nutshell: Longitudinally tracking behaviors and health exposures of every human being on Earth for data-mining for prediction, association, and causality.
Vision:Ancient people believed events in this world occurred at random or through the divine will of a deity.
However, as science has progressed over the centuries – we now know that there is virtually a reason and pattern for every event on this planet – including human behavior and outcomes.
My prediction is that one day every human being on Earth will have unique digital signatures at birth – with every major interaction with this world recorded by electronic database.
While there are of course like privacy issues – I believe this will overall be good for humanity – especially for scientists to track down the patterns of human behavior for predicting modeling, and studying causality of events.
Utilizing these such databases that track and record behaviors, environmental exposures, and various outcomes longitudinally – biostatisticians and epidemiologists can datamine for causes of human disease and outcomes to definitely determine what are risk factors for negative human outcomes, protective factors for favorable human outcomes, and what ways societies can improve to create a better civilization and make the world a better place for all of mankind!
Date Submitted: November 10, 2004
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