Data modernism: Difference between revisions

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The belief that sufficiently powerful machines running sufficiently sophisticated [[algorithm]]s over sufficiently massive quantities of unstructured [[data]] can, by themselves, solve the future.}} A prelude to the [[great delamination]].
The belief that sufficiently powerful machines running sufficiently sophisticated [[algorithm]]s over sufficiently massive quantities of unstructured [[data]] can, by themselves, solve the future.}} A prelude to the [[great delamination]].


There is a strand of [[High modernism|modernist]] thinking that flows from [[The Death and Life of Great American Cities|Robert Moses]], Le Corbusier, that there is an optimisable configuration for human interaction and it can be derived from a rigorously scientific, or at least mathematical, method: that the only obstacle to implementing it has been the lack of a sufficiently powerful machine to run the calculation.
There is a strand of [[High modernism|high-modernist]]<ref>For more on high-modernism see {{br|The Death and Life of Great American Cities}} and {{br|Seeing Like a State}}</ref> that optimised human interaction can be derived mathematically from data science: that all that has stopped it till now is the want of a sufficiently powerful machine to run the calculations.


The time is now close at hand, whereby the means is at our disposal. We now have the processing power to take massive amounts of “[[noise]]” and from it extrapolate a [[Signal-to-noise ratio|signal]]. We don’t necessarily understand ''how'' the [[algorithm]]<nowiki/>s extrapolate a signal; they just do — this inscrutability is part of the appeal of it: there is no “all-too-human” bias<ref>At least, until the algo goes rogue and becomes a Nazi.</ref> — but there is a belief which stretches from paid-up Randian anarcho-capitalists to certified latter-day socialists, that ''we can solve our problems with data''.
This is a generalisation, but it funds extreme expression in the {{The Singularity is Near|nearby singularity]], the [[simulation hypothesis]] and [[AI]], and in more gentle terms in [[Blockchain]] maximalism, [[alpha Go]].
 
The underlying premise: the universe is monstrously complicated, but fundamentally bounded, [[finite]] and probabilistic. It is not [[complex]].
 
By this view the time is now close at hand, whereby the means to calculate everything is at our disposal. We now have the processing power to take colossal “[[noise]]” and from it extrapolate a [[Signal-to-noise ratio|signal]]. We don’t necessarily understand ''how'' the machines will do this; just that they will: this [[algorithm|algorithmic]] inscrutability is part of the appeal: there is no “all-too-human” bias<ref>At least, until the algo goes rogue and becomes a Nazi.</ref> — but there is a belief which stretches from paid-up Randian anarcho-capitalists to certified latter-day socialists, that ''we can solve our problems with data''.


===Data ''modernism''? Or ''post''-modernism?===
===Data ''modernism''? Or ''post''-modernism?===