Varian believes that a new era is dawning for what you might call the datarati—and it's all about harnessing supply and demand. "What's ubiquitous and cheap?" Varian asks. "Data." And what is scarce? The analytic ability to utilize that data. As a result, he believes that the kind of technical person who once would have wound up working for a hedge fund on Wall Street will now work at a firm whose business hinges on making smart, daring choices—decisions based on surprising results gleaned from algorithmic spelunking and executed with the confidence that comes from really doing the math.
要するに、 datarati は、現在膨大に存在するデータをうまく検索・整理して、それに基づいて優れた決断ができる人たちである。
datarati は data と -rati でできた言葉だが、語尾の -rati は意外に古い。
Oxford English Dictionary で literati の初出は Robert Burton の
Anatomy of Melancholy (『憂鬱の解剖』、1621年。くも本は多数ある。例えば
1,
2, 3, 4)。その時代からの意味(
OED: "Men of letters; the learned class as a whole."; 『新英和大辞典』:「1 文学者たち. 2 学者社会, 知識人階級.」)は現在も変わらないが、近年、datarati のように他の -rati で終わる言葉が多数造られている。
KOD の英和には次のような例がある。
culturati 「文化人たち, 文化人階級」
digerati 「コンピューター知識人階級, デジタル知識人」
geekerati 「コンピューターおたくの集団[連中]」
glitterati 「社交界の花形; 名士, 有名人」
illiterati 「文盲者, 無教養者」
jazzerati 「すぐれたジャズ演奏家, 偉大なジャズ音楽家」
liberati 「《フェミニズム運動で》 解放された女性」
numerati 「経済界の若手の大物[傑物]」
slopperati 「わざとラフでよごれた服装をする富裕家庭の若者たち」
ウェブで検索してみると、次も見つかる。
blogorati (用例: "The view that we are seeing a phase change in the nature of the Web is quite prevalent amongst some of the more vocal parts of the blogorati.")
computerati ("Web-based applications are all the rage among the computerati these days.)
hipsterati ("I just got back from an evening at Serpentine, where the hipsterati were out in full force and lined up for beef tartare, tender ribs, and duck pate.")
mangarati ("Before Hill's psi-tales won him cult-status among the mangarati, he was an occasional contributor to Squashed Rat, a little known REMzine on the War of the Worlds Channel on Portal 17.")
slackerati ("Katz has a good feel for the low-key rhythms of everyday life among the slackerati.")
spinerati ("I think it is wishful thinking on her part, but she is part of the spinerati. The bloviator class will be telling people how bad things are for four years.")
Twitterati ("A lot of the ‘Twitterati’ are high-profile bloggers or other people of influence with the online community.")
lexicorati は存在しなかったようなので、今ここでそれを造語する。どうぞご利用ください。