Tom was tweeting about Big Data & Gamification & Algorithmic determinism this morning. Though the thread here is not 100% transparent, we thought you might be amused.
Tom’s tweets:
As I dig deeper into big data/algorithmic determinism/gamification I am appropriately impressed but feel as if the world is being sterilized.
Read big data/gamification/algorithmic gurus and wonder where the human beings/humanity have gone. Exabyte/zettabyte/yottabyte heaven awaits.
Loyalty 3.0 and The Gamification Revolution are my two latest Amazon acquisitions. I have no idea what I think.
“Why” [questions of causation] may become obsolete & insurance be denied because you had a Zoroastrian college roommate, but human chaos will continue to reign.
But will your sociology department be a hotbed of revolutionary thought with faculty who were selected by a big data-derived recruitment algorithm?
But artist will be uninsured because data/cameras show he once inadvertently sat across a bus isle from convicted pedophile.
I’m a trained behavioral scientist who loves nothing more than wallowing in data, but some bigdata-/alorithmized-world implications unsettle.
On the other hand: As a 40-yr student DKahneman (e.g., Thinking, Fast & Slow), I’m frightfully aware of how routinely our instincts suck.
Kurzweil’s The Singularity Is Near sits on my bedside table, and I wish I’d wake up one morning and discover it missing.
As someone who’s lived for 50 years with a religious belief in the primacy of data, it’s an “Oh-shit-my-dream’s-come-true” nightmare moment.
Religiously believing in the Supreme Power of Data was fine … as long as your data sucked.
Data uber alles. There is no God but Correlation. Is the Googleplex Heaven? Or Hell?
My problem is the more I study, the less idea I have of what I think. And I know for sure that’s either a good thing or a bad thing.
What is the mathematical relationship between a yottabyte and yadda yadda yadda?