How does a four letter word change the conversation?

We were fortunate enough to be part of an interesting article today in Business Week, worth the read (disclosure: I work for Umbria). Aside from the obvious questions regarding privacy, applications of knowledge, and past examples, I was a little surprised about what was missing: Why can it be done?

I don’t mean the math and modeling parts which are well covered in the article, but why can it be done at all? The “it” in question is why can humans and the encapsulation of their actions and thoughts be so easily converted into math (the 4 letter word) and be both accurate and predictable? As a species, are we not as multi-dimensional as we believe we are?

Perhaps a question better posed to apophenia.