This presentation was done as a part of the university course called “Digital Challenges and Ethical Choices”. There, I developed an a critical literature reivew on Social Physics, exploring it as a quantitative social science that uses big data to map the mathematical connections between “idea flow” and human behavior. I grounded my research with Alex Pentland (2014) and Jusup et al. (2022), I evaluated how social learning and network incentives drive group productivity and societal norms. My analysis bridged theoretical frameworks, such as Brownian Motion and Lorenz’s Butterfly Model with practical applications in e-commerce and epidemiology.
To conclude, I provided a critical reflection on the ethics of “reality mining,” highlighting the inherent tension between the opportunities for socio-economic stability and the significant risks regarding data privacy and cybersecurity.