Hello dear Geert Lovink,
you can have these ideas in my mind.
i just tried here to cut to edit out the snip part to make it stand out a bit better for you.
i think you can take interest in Law of One: RA the philosopher of L/L research (the two physicians who devoted themselves on these communication): centered on the architecture of densities in the universe.
A bit like Spinoza who conceptualized ONE as an <<infinite power, called <<Substance>>, expressing itself with flows, called <<modes>>
RA during the 1980.s, intervened as a <<spirit>> using a women.s voice to explain his views on ONE
base on waves, that have frequencies, we either accelerate in frequencies or downgrade.
we either pass beyond this universe we know, gifted within one octave,
or passe below and reach to an other octave.. like on an infinite piano.
RA explains or builds a temporary hypothesis that humanity is on third density at the moment he was/is speaking. 1980.
the minerals are of the first density. you would have heard of this in newagers communities: the root chakra, vibrates with a red aura. It is expressing our need for security. or grants it, to us and to the surrounding other densities complexes.
the orange vibration: in short, growth, plants and animal individuals-complexes-societies.
the third comes up when an animal or a tree has learned enough, took on his memory enough luggage or experience, for example a cat or a dog, and will enter by being born a human baby.
but the <<human objects>> of the yellow density are considered by RA to be part of the human complex. (the table, the tv, the radio, the bus, the helicopter, the chair,...)
That is why i talk about this, in relation to your concern for data.
the yellow third density is molar would say Deleuze and Guattari.
Some singular (individuals) might exist on Earth who have been reaching higher densities. Like Jesus, they about whom so they say, he who was of the fourth density: green chakra of plexus : Love.
Yellow is more noisy, and is a density where entities have a choice between continuing the path upwards either by choosing <<service to self>>
either <<service to others>>
the majority chooses service to self, because in our environment, in our moral environment, it is organized that way, and the easy path is the self.
the service to others is people who have left the morality (so called yellow density): abandoned this compression of our society, and want rather to be free, (say, a bit like Jack Kerouak in Dharma Bums, or On the Road,..)while at the same time they help other inner souls to go up, that is to accelerate, to being more conscious of the world, to its infinite sea of signs, its elements.
in that light you see how Big Data can play a role:
like control, reinforcement of authoritarian control,
big data drags you backwards, in the service to self.
the <<i>> phone, the <<digital identity>> wanted by Davos, the deciders.
so the religion is not the religion of guys like Yuval Harari.
They certainly know better than to have a faith in big data.
But they manage to publish their books, as its useful for their masters, and for their cult, and i have seen many intellectuals weak enough to take a knee, and submit their intellect to this religion he subliminally -or sometimes explicitly- proposes to the <<masses>>.
The self-service, RA is talking about it with a sneer, as << negative>> and the altruist, secret Alliance of souls service, as a <<positive>> polarity in ONE
its really about controlling masses of people a bit like the black cube in Mecca where you see crowds turning around this stone a bit like the rings turn around the planet Saturn (who plays this role of sun, in the awareness of these ego driven people of the selfish religion) A secret comes occulted by the political sheer of appearances in the media of Yuval and others. They are mind switchers, or sort of.. programming consciousnesses, with web pages, books, and universities .
So i tell you its not much use of fighting big data.
As long as this cult is alive and thriving on this world, we have nothing to stop them.
They will talk. They will act.
But what we can do is to think how can technology help us in another project in the meantime that they loose foot on ground, a project that would aim at the opposite of their goal: not to drag people on Earth into a lower density, towards eventually reaching to the octaves below, but instead looking for the more difficult of the tasks, yet the most rewarding in terms of happyness to be in this world, grounded yet tending upwards: with or without technology, we could reach alone and collectively the above us densities, beginning with the green density of universe love, then cyan wisdom of it, etc (see Law Of One, the Ra Materials, for more info on this) but as you will learn, we as humanity of Terra, have a pretty long journey till we get to this (what with the indigo, violet, silver, gold, platinum ,densities ?etc.)
I think technology of << non data>> should be scrutinized from a non objective-science
perspective, for all these reasons and for others.
Data and objectivity goes hand in hand.
Fact is already different.
A fact is something that matters to a human consciousness
A data is something which <<matters>> or functions, which enables a computer to flow.
A data is like a unit in the flow of consciousness of the computer , whatever its size.
Human awareness have to give up Isabelle Stengers and Karl Popper: their defense of an authoritarian Third World « Knowledge » a Science that is working like the community of Superior Men.
By giving up, as Van Gogh did, as you mentioned this painter, we are reconnecting to science as Galileo did: by study and experimentation.
Not by obeying to objectivity.
That is not to say we have to destroy old paradigms, but just that we have to build one that fits in with our present goal to reach fourth density and beyond.
We dont have to burn old libraries and old data.
But readapt old tools & computers and build new tools superior, adequate to the higher densities as they are superior in experience to our Present, and so having grown our mind, and not our computer data etc, we can use our newly formed inner minds to elevate within us our environment on Terra (computers included) so that we enjoy the planet as it should, as deserved (it is alive, as G.Simondon and the animists demonstrated i think) this in an incommensurable way to the previous milleniums, a way of ever increasing a subtle satisfaction : of the senses, and the intellect, and a new political organisation that would decipher what mistakes were done in mankind.s history and what we can learn from past experience to create our future.
Un saludo desde Ibiza,
Marine fille de Pirate.
. Following the definition of peak oil, we can state that peak data will be the moment when the maximum rate of extractivism is reached and the platform logic implodes, after which a steep decline sets in until systems and their users are outside of the entropy danger zone.
In a variation of Marx, we could speak of the tendency of the rate of meaning to fall. After the peak, the degradation of data will grow exponentially and databases are compromised beyond repair.
. After the manic, restrictive Covid years, the big data hype lost its innocence for good.
According to Katherine Behar data is like plastic. ?
Big data critique had its moment. And it didn?t really come from the media theorists. It was mostly coming from concerned scientists and the enlightened managerial class: pragmatic, reasonable, harmless and predictable. It was big data critique 101: data are not objective, data comes with interests, and so on. The first mistake was to accept the framing: big data. Rarely it was about the size and more about a widespread datafication and the unspoken new grand narrative it supports.
. In 2020 Miriam Rasch published Friction?Ethics in Times of Dataism <https://www.debezigebij.nl/boek/frictie/>, published in Dutch by De Bezige Bij. In an English summary <https://www.eurozine.com/friction-and-the-aesthetics-of-the-smooth/> of her book written for Eurozine Rasch criticizes the desire for optimization in data science.
Data are seen as the next step in science.
According to Rasch, this belief is nowhere better exemplified than in Harari.s <<Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow>>. In his pancomputationalism . the universe, plant and animal, human and machine all work in the same way. In comparison with a machine, human beings are hopelessly inefficient and lacking in organization. Dataism is framed as a religion all subjects of the socio-technologi
cal regime believe in. We live inside the data cosmology. The data sphere is here described as a natural monade: dataism is the inevitable paradigm of our times. Rasch believes that in this mechanistic worldview, extrapolated into a not-so-distant future where we will all function as a computer.
In this vision, downfall and progress go hand in hand. Inefficient human faces a certain destiny. Dataism is a cynical faith depicting today.s world as a deplorable intermediate stage on the path to something better.
. In line with Vincent van Gogh.s <<Real painters do not paint things as they are>>They paint them as they themselves feel them to be>> we need impressionist data approaches. In opposition to the current data regime the Institute of Network Culture (INC) has focused on the production and support of <<rather not>> theories and critiques of internet culture. One cannot expect that such data scepticism is met with enthusiasm. The untimely continental-European perspectives aim to build autonomous, interdisciplinary research networks on topics such as search, Wikipedia, social media alternatives and revenue models for the arts. INC does not believe in <<data science>> and explicitly aims to undermine its core belief system: the data religion itself. This is not merely done out of resentment as decades of sadist neo-liberal budget cuts under the fla
g of the <<creative industries>>have all but diminished the arts and humanities work. In this respect, we have not forgotten the loud silence of the so-called <<hard science>> communities over the cruel policies that ultimately crippled the arts. We unapologetically believe in the subversive power of theory, philosophy, literature and the arts and the ultimate victory of poetry over bean-counting. Measurement is in the process of orchestrating a power grab, aimed to destroy critical thinking as such. There cannot be peace or mutual understanding in a world where data are explicitly utilized to eliminate culture.
What are the so-called <<sciences>> doing to uphold the unfolding data-driven educational disaster? Are they ready to repair the damage done and dismantle their own datacenters?
The ultimate aim of dataism is becoming clear: to undermine the emergence of a new self that is no longer paranoid, depressed and insecure. What characters emerge once the performative quantified self metamorphoses?
Destroy data at the source, and no longer capture, let alone preserve them. This is the real <<de-automation>> design challenge Rushkoff.s Team Human is facing, in line with Katherine Behar.s : deceleration.
What.s to be done after the deconstruction of the data cult?
One day, soon, people will wake up in disbelief, realizing that data is dead. The point is not to overcome the dark side of data, regulate IT giants and establish <<responsible>> governance but to lay networked data amassing aside. Once system maintenance subsides, data gathering regimes fall in disrepair.
Relational databases may still exist but one day they will simply stop bothering us. Fuelled by organized unbelief the invasive, sneaky, manipulative side of the measure mania fades away. Rarely anyone will remember the data religion.