Not all data are equal
It used to be that data meant a lot to computer folk. It was the hard currency exchanged between the computer programs that we wrote and the real world that we lived in. Somebody (or something) would input data into a computer system, our programs would process it, and then some more data would be output back into the world. This rudimentary input, processing, output cycle was the engine of the information technology revolution from the earliest digital computers all the way through the explosion of the internet and web.
After the web, came social media, which made data both personal and simultaneously promoted it into a corporate asset. Data science emerged out of the recesses of academia, retail analytics and market research, blazing into the public consciousness as a critical tool for solving human problems far beyond the clockwork algorithms of conventional computer programs. Since the 2010’s mass data collection has fuelled revolutions in public policy and the understanding of complex human behaviours. AI and Machine Learning algorithms running on “big data” have destroyed the myth that computers would never have anything useful to say about love or politics.
Nowadays, data “means a lot” to more than just computer folk. It is a resource valued far beyond the scope of the technical systems we use for processing it. In our everyday lives we are now (sometimes painfully) aware that data, carefully managed, can be the key to making profound decisions that change the lives of individuals, society and sometimes even the world that we live in.
Data - carefully managed!? Why is careful management important? What’s so special about a bunch of bits on a disk or in the cloud? After all, I can copy it, wrangle it, delete it, restore it and share it in vast quantities at the tap of key, and and the cost of a few microvolts of electricity. Surely, there’s nothing precious about data that means we need to invest in it, steward it and govern it across its lifecycle, as if it were an actual thing?
And this is where our journey down the rabbit hole begins. This is where we separate out the data specialists from the dilettantes. Do you believe in well-organised data as an essential store of value? Do you believe in the the digital library of humankind as our last defence against the overwhelming eroding forces of entropy, so intent on erasing the faint record of our kind from the mostly empty ledger of history?
This a place for the data-specialists. This is not a place for application developers, data scientists or other transients. This is the place where we take the downtrodden and meaningless facts, collapsed like an empty sack, and elevate them into upright data, bulging with context and veracity in our collective consciousness. This is the place where we raise data up onto their righteous, immutable and persistent pedestal.