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 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 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]].
+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 leader|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 nonetheless fundamentally bounded, [[Finite and Infinite Games|finite]] and probabilistic. It is ''complicated'', not [[complex|''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''.
+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, and far from [[algorithm|algorithmic]] inscrutability being a matter of concern, it 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>
+Nutshell: 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?===
-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.
+An initial objection to the label: 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 an ineffable ''[[algorithm]]''. The problem is solved not by theory-dependent syllogism, but by a neural network operating at a scale, speed and depth that, to mortal hand and eye, is quite opaque.
+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.
 High modernism — a type of top-down, controlling, conviction politics — thereby seems sufficiently different to “data modernism” — agnostic, open-minded, conditional, following the evidence rather than shaping it — that we shouldn’t use the same term for both. what I am calling data modernism is in more like [[Post-modernism|''post''modernism]], or ''post''-[[Post-modernism|postmodernism]].
+But this is a difference of emphasis not  upshot. It is a different path to the same place. Data science is just a new conveyance to the same reductionist theory of the world.
 === Unstructured data as hubbub ===
-Now data, as it comes, is an incoherent, imperfect, meaningless thing. It is the pre-cinema audience chat before the lights go down;  a “hubbub” made up of millions of individual interactions, each of which has its own (possibly imperfect) meaning '''—''' but which aggregated taken as a whole have no particular meaning at all.
+Now data, as it comes, is an incoherent, imperfect, meaningless thing. It is the pre-cinema audience chat before the lights go down;  a “hubbub” made up of millions of individual interactions, each of which ''may'' have its own meaning '''—''' or may be incoherent, or wrong-headed, or irrelevant '''—''' but in any case when aggregated and taken as an unmoderated whole has no particular meaning at all, beyond “people are talking”?
-Now imagine being asked to take that audience hubbub and condense it to a single proposition: “what was this audience thinking?”  But the interactions are unstructured, as between themselves random and disconnected. Obviously, there ''is'' no thread.
+Now imagine being asked to take that audience hubbub and, with magical tools, to condense it to the single proposition: “what was this audience thinking?”  But the interactions are unstructured, as between themselves random and disconnected. Obviously, there ''is'' no thread.
 But this is what the algorithm is supposedly doing when it extracts signal from noise. Selectively, it filters, limit, compresses and amplifies on the presumption that there ''is'' a signal to fund among noise; that all the conversations in that hubbub do boil down to some common sentiment, and that those which don’t are no more than noise: that the hubbub is something like a de-tuned radio, or the white noise on the SETI<ref>Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. You know, Jodie Foster in ''Contact''.</ref> data, buried within which are signals from pulsars, quasars and intelligent life.