Sunday, July 19, 2015

We are data but we are also a great deal more. If only we had an operating system that understood and encouraged that.


The attitude expressed in this article is as depressing as it is illustrative of everyone being unable to think outside of the mandate of money. Remembering that, in this context, money is information and information is money now that Capitalism has been deformed by electricity, and electrified information retrieval systems.

We are data. That is certainly true. But virtually everything is. One has not made much of an enlightening statement when utters this. The real problem is the automatic incentive to fuck with data at every level that Capitalism now provides. The only part here that is inevitable is that someone will respond to that incentive and will try to act upon it before, and/or with better effectiveness, than anybody else, so as to acquire competitive advantage and be more successful in the process of net gain. Because, in that success, is their true power. At least as it relates to further success in playing the money game we call Capitalism. Take away the incentive and you take away a great deal of the inevitability of data in reasoning engines becoming our ultimate successors.

Prints by Douglas Coupland

We are data: the future of machine intelligence

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