Decisions. It appears that today it’s really hard to choose, most of the times when we need to make a decision we have 3,587,623 options, not two or three or five. Not long ago we could represent our data world as a linear system: There was good and bad, heaven and hell, it was very clear on whose side you’re on. But then, something changed and suddenly our way of storing and processing data transformed, its structure mutated from linear to tree-like. Some say it started after World War II when political changes led to change in ethics and intellect. Others believe it started with the industrial revolution when the term growth adopted a new set of mathematical rules. It is agreeable that today, our world of data looks very different than it previously did. It is very complex, and contains a multitude of inseparable factors. Our data system became so sophisticated that it is hard to understand it and grasp it in one’s mind without using tools and new methods of visualization/representation.
The last issue of “Wired” magazine was dedicated to the “Petabyte Age”. They stated that enormous amounts of data with ever-changing environments (real-time) changed the way we used to think about almost everything. They gave examples for predicting future global violent areas by analyzing news from around the world, or predicting election results by analyzing very specific voting population behavior (there are lots of companies all around the world that will pay good money to have a reliable prediction about the upcoming election in the US), or predictions of unexpected events like terror attacks that have a significant impact on local insurance rates.
It was a very interesting discussion that showed how this flow of data changes “cold” numbers and influences mathematician and analysts, as well as the way we approach daily problems and the way we understand the world we live in.
On this topic, take a look at this video from the TED conference, it is a little bit long, but I can guarantee it’s worth every second. In this short talk Michael Pollan discusses a new thinking approach towards sustainability. If you really can’t spare 17 minutes to see this video you can jump to minute 9:50, and only listen to the example he gives.
I think the example is fascinating, and it really made me feel that maybe sustainability is not such an annoying word, and that this mess we are in right now in terms of global warming and too much consumption may have very simple but smart solutions.
The second topic he talks about is the fact that although our world had tremendously changed, the way we conceive it hasn’t changed a bit since the 17th century. We still see the world as a linear system, where there is a direct relationship between action and consequence, where there is good and bad, beautiful and ugly, nature and man-made. Although we live about 300 years after the beginning of the industrial revolution and 70 years after World War II, most of us still see the world through Cartesian glasses. And it is not surprising since we are educated to think this way. When we think about big events and powers that effect us (things that are bigger than us: economy, for example) we can understand that they have various modalities and multi-relational systems, but it is still hard for us to understand that we are not in the Cartesian world any more when we think about the everyday aspects of our life as well.
you can see the battle between the traditional Cartesian way of thinking and the dual contemporary one in the movie industry. In the last couple of years ordinary Good Vr. Evil stories get a new twist. I'm talking about movies like Batman and James Bond. It is interesting to see these movies because they used to have a very simple story-line, a very known and good ending and they are been made for sever years now so we can compare the new sequals to the previews ones. For example the new Batman (not like the old Tim Burton's Batmans)presents a twisted hero, who actes humanly and most of the times find it hard to decide. So, heros no longer save the day, and you, the small man, can't always count on them. The movie also makes an exstensive use of Game Theory and the Prisoner's Dilemma, which brings us back to- decisions.
