Mycroftsoft^Š Software

Based on the legendary ability of Sherlock Holmes and his brother Mycroft to make deductions that were not only accurate but seemingly impossible comes MycroftsoftŠ, the world's first realization of this technique - fast, accurate and reliable. Almost mystical, some say.

Holmes' ability, while fictional, was based on Arthur Conan Doyle's medical experience and an acquaintance of his, doctor Joseph Bell. This software is actually life imitating art imitating life.

Holmes could look at a hat and deduce a man's IQ, his employment record, marital status and even if the gas were turned on or not in his flat. He could look at a cane or walking stick and come close to drawing a picture of the owner. Mycroft had even greater deductive abilities, and when he and Holmes got together, they could look at a man on the street below their window and know that he was an ex-Navy man who served in India, whose wife had recently died and who has two children, for starters. Watson, like most skeptics, always needed more proof.

Mycroftsoft^Š performs these deductions in an almost magical way, but it is based on nothing but pure logic and analysis techniques using the computer application of critical thinking skills, brought to their utmost peak and honed with creative intelligence.

The software gathers data from the internet, reading such public data as email, chat room discussions, messageboard and NewsGroup postings and blogs and analyzes and parses the data in a very scientific manner. The data are sorted into groups, including age, IQ, geographical location, education level, political leanings, social status, income and even such curious areas as height. A person's worldview is indeed related to his height: for instance a tall man sees hair and has more accurate data regarding the balding patterns and demographics than does a short man, who lives in very different world and who may well be more informed on people's grooming habits, to be civil about it. Their writings indicate these disparate worldviews. We normally do not think about these subtle differences, but MycroftsoftŠ does, and he is very good about sorting things out. In general, left and right-handed people have very different worldviews, as do men and women, children and adults - and their writings all carry some of this information. It cannot be hidden, only disguised. A person who writes with the hand he normally doesn't use still maintains certain traits which are not motor related, but mental, and the two pieces of handwriting, to an expert, can be determined to have come from the same person. Even over long periods of time, handwriting is still a method of recognition. Some even go further and claim that an analysis of the writing itself lends one to character and personality traits or the writer. To the same or greater extent, so does the content of his writing. This is where Mycroftsoft^Š is at his very best. Scanned or OCR'ed handwritten or typed data are also fodder for Mycroftsoft^Š, supplementing his input via the internet.

Right now, Mycroftsoft^Š is in the process of being evaluated on a small-scale basis but we expect a lot from him in the future. In addition to correlation and analysis of data, the content and context of data can be measured, with the result that spam and other annoying email and postings can easily be graded and measured, with a possible resolution as to where it really came from and who wrote it. The old expression, "you can run but you can't hide" becomes a reality. We are what we write.

Mycroftsoft^Š goes far beyond the extraordinary - being able to locate a person's physical location, in theory; to determine if plagiarism has occurred, even when craftily disguised, and to determine if what appears to be totally disparate posts or writings have come from the same person. Again, life imitating art, Nero Wolfe, a product of Rex Stout's imagination, did a very similar thing in "Plot it Yourself." Yes, Wolfe is fictional, but Stout was real and the idea came from Stout's fertile imagination. We are just applying what others have merely ideated. Software that can almost read minds is here. Tomorrow the "almost" will be gone.

Update June 2004: A recent court decision in Massachusetts has essentially put all email into the public domain, so unless it is encrypted, it is now available to certain people for analysis. We recommend encrypting all internet data, email and, wherever possible, all other postings that are not intended for public consumption. Make sure you are using a good encryption engine. Google intends to read their gmail to determine a person's preference in worldly goods and direct specific advertising to him alone.