Martin Hilbert

Who

Professor, UC Davis — Computational Social Science and Communication.

Core Idea

First quantified the world's technological information capacity. Studies how digitalization reshapes society at structural, not behavioral, level. Raised early alarm about Cambridge Analytica.

Key Works

• "The World's Technological Capacity to Store, Communicate, and Compute Information" (Science, 2011)
• Ongoing computational social science research

Relevance

Academic legitimacy in the digital power space. Also a living example of how to be a rigorous researcher who operates publicly. His early Cambridge Analytica warning is the equivalent of your "being right before it's obvious" positioning.

Connected To

• Shoshana Zuboff — quantified the infrastructure surveillance capitalism runs on
• Manuel Castells — empirical grounding for network society claims
• Ron Deibert — both work empirically at the intersection of data and political power

Notes