If Statistics continue to progress as it has done for several years, if the information which it gives us continues to gain in accuracy, in dispatch, in bulk, and in regularity, a time may come when upon the accomplishment of every social event a figure will at once issue forth automatically, so to speak, to take its place on the statistical registers that will be continuously communicated to the public and spread aboard pictorially by the daily press. Then, at every step, at every glance cast upon poster or newspaper, we shall be assailed, as it were, with statistical facts, with precise and condensed knowledge of all the peculiarities of actual social conditions, of commercial gains or losses, of the rise or falling off of certain political parties, of the progress or decay of a certain doctrine, etc. in exactly the same way as we are assailed when we open our eyes by the vibrations of the either which tell us of the approach of withdrawal of such and such a so-called body and of many other things of a similar nature."
The above quote is from Gabriel Tarde's book "The Laws of Imitation", written in 1903. 1903!! More than 100 years ago, someone figured out that this is possible. I am impressed.