loveMELT newsletter #003: Back to the Future

I like thinking about the future.

...Truth be told, I’m obsessed with it. Why? Because when I think about the future it spurs me to think about the present and therefore think about the past which brought us to the present. It becomes full circle. To me, thinking about the future is pertinent. Protecting the future now is important.

So, where are we presently? In the midst of infotech and biotech revolutions, we, humans, are changing ourselves, our interactions, our environment so rapidly that the possibilities of the future feel like science fiction...for better or worse, our future is to be determined.

If only we could go back to the future like matter can go from a solid to a liquid to a gas state and vice versa. Unfortunately for us, time doesn’t work this way. It’s a one-way street so no 20/20 hindsight vision to improve our decision-making.

However, we can look back at what has guided human life or who/what we have created to direct our decision-making. Thinking about it, we’ve roughly flowed from deities to human free will to data and algorithms in the present and foreseeable future. Still, many people consider themselves to be living in line with a god or through their own free will. Yet, the technological innovators of our time know where we’re heading because they’re coding the future on Earth and corporations are manufacturing us into it.

This feels like a sucker punch because, at the dawn of its age, the internet was said to propagate equality to people, to push us towards egalitarianism, a decentralized, open-source utopia. While so much data and information are being created by masses of people, people like myself, these same masses of people don’t have access to informative data, let alone know how to understand and use it to make better decisions based upon it.

Isn’t it fascinating that attention merchants like Google and Facebook and large corporations own the data we create? We're not paid for that data. We don’t have access to the data. We're not able to review the data to make better decisions for ourselves. The data we create is used to manipulate us to make decisions, to buy something, to politically lean a specific direction, and to idealize ourselves a certain way. An image, an identity molded for us, not by us. Companies, acquiring and selling our information, are shaping who we are and what they want us to become, in their ideal. As these ‘free’ services grab our attention and we supply them with immense amounts of information, we're not their customers, we're their products.

It’s apparent that being able to make informed decisions based on aggregated information and data leads to success in today’s capitalistic world. And by success, I mean power/monetary wealth. For a very direct example, think about a savvy stock trader who owns and operates a Bloomberg Terminal for their insightful benefit. Now let’s say that person throws in algorithmic trading into their buy/sell game based on their learned knowledge and Bloomberg insights. Hot damn! That’s a home run hitter! (And to add the cherry on top, that person no longer needs to spend vast amounts of time and emotional energy trading. They can go achieve more success elsewhere while the algorithms do the work.) I’d say a person like this has a high decision-making AKA bet-making AKA risk-taking batting average leading them to success. It’s definitely above average, but they’re much better positioned to provide you their exact stats so I’ll keep my human guesstimate of their batting average at ‘high’.

Now, imagine if you and I had access to indexes of data pertinent to our livelihoods, our industries, our surroundings, and our interests that we are able to analyze by pressing a few buttons on a keyboard. Some of you would say, Sadie, we have this, it’s called Google, you moron. That’s not what I’m talking about. Google runs on ads and search engine optimization geared towards obtaining my data and generating their profit. What I want, especially by this point in time, is ‘Bloomberg terminal’ capabilities and more aggregators, indexes, and databases made for the masses, filled with data and information, available to the public, somewhat easy to understand and able to be worked with, able to be filtered and analyzed from different perspectives, to inform our decisions, or better yet, to enable us to make AN informed decision.

Privately held companies are out here exponentially scaling their insights about me and my surroundings, enhancing their capabilities, and increasing their capital based on the masses’ data and I’m over here making a pb&j. To be fully transparent, I’m not sure I even want to be surrounded by all this data and technology, as we’ve learned from history, positively intentioned innovations can lead to wide-ranging results. But, to put it simply, those who own the data own the future. So, let us be inclusive in our design.

There are so many near and far-off future thinking questions to be asked in regards to data, accessible information, and our identities. Not only do most of us lack the time to address the matter(s) proactively, but most of us don’t have access to this data, we don’t understand a lot of data, and we don’t sense make based on cumulative data. We aren’t being taught/informed how to obtain and use data even though we live in the age of data. We just make the data. In regards to shaping the technological future, we certainly aren’t at the round table discussion, we’re not in the room, we’re not in the building. I’m not sure where we are. Ironic since there is no data if there is no us.

Okay, out of fear that the length of this email will prevent you from reading further (if you’ve even read this far), let’s dig into currently available databases/informative resources in my NEXT newsletter for us to become familiar with or reacquaint ourselves with. Now you have something to look forward to…..hooorayyyyyyyyyyyy. And, as I continue my current collection of artworks, you will continue to see some of the specific future grey areas and questions I’m keen to ponder with you. I plan to write about each piece in a way that invites you to examine and dialogue these curiosities with me so we can be aware and present at the decision-making, future-thinking round tables for the sake of ourselves and for the sake of our future fellow humans.

Sending my love to you,

Sadie

P.S. I learned a new acronym this week. AFK. AFK is where I’m going now.