Once upon a time, I went for a walk with a friend along the river—a perfectly pleasurable experience. Then, we stopped.
They checked their watch and said:
"I forgot to measure our steps."
Jokingly, I responded:
"So shall we go back and start anew?"
Which would have turned it into a three-hour walk.
They considered for a little until lastly rejecting that option.
Recently, I have had some serious online dating fatigue.
In part, that's because these apps reduce the other into little more than a few data points.
As the famous song goes, all it takes is being 6'5, having a hedge fund, and blue eyes.
Reductionist, but if you look at the Hinge or Bumble interface, we all have to fit into the same template of height, default choices for hobbies, causes one cares about, political affiliation, social-economic status as implied via pictures, limited prompts.
Maybe that's why then the overarching data point the other has tried to collect from me so far was simply if I was willing to instantly gratify their animalistic desires for reproduction (without the actual reproduction cause ain't none of those want to commit to raising a kid).
By the way, this data point stands in perfect contrast with the idea of judging another person (especially women) by their "body count"—where some arbitrary low number is seen as a sign of virtue.
It's all so tiresome.
When I tell people that I love to read, a common reaction is:
"So, how many books have you read?"
On the surface, nothing wrong with that.
But does it matter?
If you think about it deeply, that's such a random way to qualify quantify my identity as a reader.
You're a reader when you read. The amount of books says next to nothing.
Maybe even nothing, because we've all heard of someone bragging about how many books they read, only to find out they listen to audiobooks at 2x speed without taking much note of what happens in them.
Chances are it's more important what you do while and after you read.
What all of these examples have in common is their attempt to reduce everything into a few data points, often with the notion that everything can be made comparable that way.
There are those who define themselves by the to-do-list times they've checked off, those who track their heart rate when meditating (because even relaxation has to be optimized these days to be a better laborer under capitalism), the marketing people who tell me to write an article of exactly 2600 words no more nor less because that's what Google thinks is authoritative - lol - and those who want to tokenize everything because everything can and should be assigned a monetary value.
Neoliberalism critiques will usually point to capital as the grand equalizer, the force by which everything is evaluated and made comparable.
Yet, a monetary value is just another data point. As such, it still falls into this belief that data knows best.
In a sense, this isn't a new movement.
People have been writing journals forever. They've also tried to quantify anything from beauty to a human's worth (hello trolley problem)
Both have been rather unsuccessful pursuits, and with a shift to humanism, they are less sensical, as what's beautiful or a worthy being is ultimately up to other humans and not an external authority.
Things have changed.
While journals usually remained in the privacy of one's desk, they are now published for anyone to see.
If you told someone like Kafka that his diary is now public and tweeted by a bot on X, I wonder how he'd feel about that.
There's something intimate about writing for yourself. It's a space free of judgment.
Not anymore.
We created the condition Foucault warned about. Citizens who need no coercion to behave productively.
"There are forms of oppression and domination which become invisible - the new normal."
- Michel Foucault
The mindset is that only something that is captured, shared, and measured is valuable.
That's a dangerous path to go down. According to Yuval Noah Harari, one of the greatest threats of this century. It goes by the name:
Dataism
David Brooks coined the term in 2013 in an Op-Ed titled The Philosophy of Data. In it, he contemplated the ways we've been using data and suggested that the philosophy of the day is now data-ism.
Not post-modernism nor nihilism. Something completely different.
It's built on the idea that: "everything that can be measured should be measured; that data is a transparent and reliable lens that allows us to filter out emotionalism and ideology."
Despite taking a seemingly critical stance at first, the rest of the article is dedicated to describing the ways data has been leveraged to generate insights, from figuring out that advertising spend does not significantly translate into advantages with voters to explaining how the most intellectual of the Beatles isn't who you think he was.
All of these seem wonderful examples of what's possible with data. And they are. Data can be incredibly useful in aiding our quest for knowledge and understanding.
Yet, in modernity, we've become a little too infatuated with collecting and creating data for the sake of it. As Barenboim writes in Musik ist alles und alles ist Musik...we have an obsession with dissecting and understanding everything further and further - tearing apart ideas and facts that belong together.
The promise of quantifying the self is that it'll guide you toward happiness. That once you've optimized your heart rate, the supplements you take, the breaths you take, and carefully tracked all your moods, it'll all start making sense.
Dataism sees the human as just another machine. An algorithm that processes inputs and delivers outputs. With enough data, it should become completely predictable.. Right?
I get it, trying to fix the self by tracking offers a little solace in a world that otherwise is completely out of our control.
Self-knowledge through numbers is a nice promise and also a great way to foster engagement by tweeting your stats.
Numbers are neutral; we tell ourselves as we go on to judge others based on theirs.
Thanks to AI journals, we don't even have to draw conclusions ourselves anymore. We feed the journal with our deepest thoughts and desires, click "generate response" et voila - your life analyzed by your personal therapist.
Surely, there's no problem with that.
Except there is.
A study in Finnland found that after creating data doubles from participants and showing them data that did not conform to their personal experience, they didn't, as you might expect, say that the data was off.
Instead, they changed their statement to fit the data.
The authority moving form humans to data.
Letting the machines drive the entire narrative of the self, and how we perceive reality probably a bad idea.
And still, we're already well on our way.
Take the experience of figuring out what book to read next.
You might go to Amazon and simply check the suggestions.
"Culture isn't a toaster that you can rate out of five stars - though the website Goodreads, now owned by Amazon tries to apply those ratings to books. There are plenty of experiences I love[...] that others would doubtlessly give a bad grade "
- Kyle Chayka in Filterworld
Based on the data you supplied to the giant thus far, it'll suggest more of the same—things that, probabilistically, you'll enjoy—because other people who bought the books you did as well.
If you're reading on a Kindle, by the time you're done, you might have forgotten 80% of the book's content. But Amazon hasn't.
It is aware of the pages you read quickly and the passages you highlighted. It reads you, and uses the data to feed you more of what you like in the recommended tab. The KGB would have loved this.
The funny thing is, you have no insight into the data you thus created. You don't even "own" the book.
If you delete your Amazon account, it'll be gone.
For now, Amazon hasn't added facial recognition to their devices. Then all that's missing is measuring heart rate and body chemistry, and they'll know you better than you know yourself.
Considering how far we've come in wearable tech, can't be too long until they figure it out.
There isn't as much one when using a search engine.
"The disclosure of data is not coerced; it follows from an inner need."
- Byung Chul Han
Yet, we do not own any of this data. It's used in ways we don't necessarily understand by recommendation systems that tell us what we should believe and, to a large degree, dictate the things we consume.
"Are we executing serendipity?"
If we put data's authority above humans' what does that mean for me as an individual? And for you? For us as a society?
Will we simply let AI make all our decisions?
For now, we're not there.
Technology is not deterministic.
What we decide to do with it, however, might well be.
Already pushed into modes of passive consumption ruled by likes, follows, and engagement - where does the algorithm end and my self begin?
If the self is, as Foucault said, an art project to construct, where are we left in its construction?
Data is just data. It's not knowledge. It's not insight. It's not meaning.
So far, these are still things that humans create.
And maybe it's the lack of time we spend on these that leads to existential boredom and a sense of ennui among the chronically online.
The more we trust the data, the less, we think ourselves. The less human we become.
"When a human being becomes a set of data [...] he or she is reduced. Everything shrinks. Indivdual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility."
- Zadie Smith
The self is messy, chaotic, and hard to understand.
Thinking for yourself is exhausting.
But do we really want to forfeit the privilege of our own interpretation of the world and our inner lives to the machine?
I believe it's worth asking at times: who am I?
What did I gain from this walk other than my step count?
Who did I really vibe with even tho the dating app would have never shown us to each other?
Which book do I really like even if it's rated a bad book?
What does my intuition tell me?
Keep the algo guessing, as Naomi Klein said.
In the end, isn't being human also ignoring the data, making creative leaps, and embarking on quixotic endeavors?
"Not wanting to understand, not analyzing... To observe oneself as one observes nature, to gaze on ones impressions as one would on a field - that is true wisdom."
- Fernando Pesoa in Book of Disquiet
Thanks for reading 💚
I admit that I am also constantly battling with the results of data. Take writing. I have Grammarly, and while often it's sensible for typos, many of its suggestions cut out my voice - so I dismiss them.
I got better at it over time, but it's hard.
Some of what I consider my favorite pieces have the least views.
It's impossible to not be impacted at all by that.
Still, it helps to go out - and leave the world of instant engagement behind for a bit.
Watch the clouds pass by and hear the leaves gently rustle in the wind.
I don't need data to tell me that this is the right activity for me at that moment.
I feel it.
