#techbrain

If the big-data fundamentalists argue that more data is inherently better, closer to the truth, then there is no point in their theology at which enough is enough. This is the radical project of big data. It is epistemology taken to its limit.

...the discrimination that I identified is not intentional by scientists or engineers or simply the product of cultural values. It is a byproduct of a research and innovation cycle that has significant consequences as society deploys the resultant products.

...That’s what we're after, isn't it? To disappear? To venture into darkness, to let what we know or think we know recede for an hour, a day, a novel's length, and see what meaning can be made of what remains? It's dark down here, and lonely. I am drawn mostly, insistently to the human voice. How powerful and necessary the solo voice, the experience of being someone, something else for a little while.

We’re talking about over 100 years of the industrial and postindustrial era in which our sole preoccupation has been accelerating consumption and production... If there is any good news in this story, it’s that what began more than 100 years ago has so intensified that more of us can stand back and say: ‘Is this really what we want? Where are the places for greater, noncommodified connection?’

I had the general sense that I had allowed technology to run me over. Now I was more Eunice than Lenny, an occasional rather than a voracious reader, a curator of my life rather than a participant, a man who could walk through a stunning national park while looking up stunning national parks.

Cameras are everywhere in public, but one fixed to your face sends a more menacing signal: I have the power to record you at a moment’s notice, it seems to declare — and maybe I already am.

…We are especially unaware of how completely our attention can be absorbed by the continual availability of compelling and useful information.

We're comfortable because we believe the data and footage will never be used for anything; if it's all going into a void, we can still shape the narrative of our lives, or at least our self-serving version of the narrative, without encountering a rebuttal.