And this is art. This is
metaphor. But I think the point is that this is metaphor with teeth, and it's
with those teeth that I want to propose today that we rethink a little bit
about the role of contemporary math --not just financial math, but math in general.
That its transition from being something that we extract and derive from the
world to something that actually starts to shape it -- the world around us and
the world inside us. And it's specifically algorithms, which are basically the
math that computers use to decide stuff. They acquire the sensibility of truth
because they repeat over and over again, and they ossify and calcify, and they
become real.[1]
I am not a fan of
numbers.
Or algorithms = a process or set of
rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations.
Using
a predetermined set of rules to
decide factors that impact the complex beings we call humans is like painting a
Picasso in one colour. Limited.Finite.Unrepresentative. Clumsy.
Shift. Facebook ‘Year in Review’. Busy, tired and at the end of twenty fourteen we
propagate an algorithmic summary of our ‘lives’. The results? - as expected[2] - a
disconnect for some...for others a warm, glossy, televised feeling of 'I did that'.
We
all get this. Social networks are no different to TV networks .. popular/novel content gets air time
until its use is up - regardless of human impact or sensitivity.
It
gets bigger.
It’s
worth asking how algorithms:
-
measure our ‘intelligence’
-
moderate our search results
in google
-
decide what gets reported
as ‘news’ today
-
drive the financial
markets
-
limit our worldview?[3]
Back to 'Year in Review'.
Let it not be decided by the volume of like clicks, your social media browsing habits or any other artificial model of whats important. Perhaps the important things were never viewed, liked, promoted, photographed, published, broadcast, tagged, re-tweeted or even noted on this thing we call 'social' media.
In fact my algorithm suggests this is more than 90% likely.
Just a thought.
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