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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|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. | There is a strand of [[High modernism|high-modernist]] thought<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. | ||
This is a generalisation, but it | This is a generalisation, but it finds expression in the {{The Singularity is Near|nearby singularity]], the [[simulation hypothesis]] the more breathless aspirations for [[AI]], [[Blockchain]] maximalism, and the slack-jawed wonder with which thought leaders regard [[Alpha Go]]. | ||
The underlying premise: the universe is monstrously complicated, but fundamentally bounded, [[finite]] and probabilistic. It is not [[complex]]. | The underlying premise: the universe is monstrously complicated, but fundamentally bounded, [[finite]] and probabilistic. It is not [[complex]]. | ||
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===Data ''modernism''? Or ''post''-modernism?=== | ===Data ''modernism''? Or ''post''-modernism?=== | ||
An initial objection: in James C. | An initial objection: in [[James C. Scott]]’s classic account of [[high-modernism]]<ref>{{Br|Seeing Like A State}}</ref> there is a top-down, beneficent, controlling human mind of some kind with a pre-existing theory of the game. That central intelligence has derived a theory from deterministic first principles; a sort of [[cogito ergo sum]] begets [[income tax and rice pudding]] begets a mechanised [[High modernist|modernist]] way of life. The housing project, or five-year plan, or Ministry of Truth is an implementation of that pre-existing theory. | ||
In “data modernism” the controlling human mind does a different job: it no longer needs a pre-existing theory of the game: it delegates — or, at any rate, ''yields'' — that responsibility to a more or less ineffable ''[[algorithm]]''. the “controlling mind” need not know how, in the particular case, the algorithm works, how it gets to its conclusions, and is fixed with the conviction that, being the summed and filtered output of the collected [[wisdom of the crowd]], the algorithm has a greater intelligence than any “single controlling” mind anyway. | In “data modernism” the controlling human mind does a different job: it no longer needs a pre-existing theory of the game: it delegates — or, at any rate, ''yields'' — that responsibility to a more or less ineffable ''[[algorithm]]''. the “controlling mind” need not know how, in the particular case, the algorithm works, how it gets to its conclusions, and is fixed with the conviction that, being the summed and filtered output of the collected [[wisdom of the crowd]], the algorithm has a greater intelligence than any “single controlling” mind anyway. | ||