David Brooks, "What Data Can’t Do": Data Can't Take Out the Trash

"I am not a number, I am a free man."

- Number Six, "The Prisoner"

Do your remember Patrick McGoohan in the 1960s television series "The Prisoner"? Having resigned from his government position, presumably in intelligence, McGoohan is hustled off to the Village, where he is assigned the number six, and where the "forces that be" attempt to discover why he left. I have also resigned in a fashion, and like it or not have been given a number, or actually a series of numbers.

I don't think the people who produced "The Prisoner" a half century ago would ever have imagined how today everything we do - buying habits, browsing preferences, etc. - is data mined and assigned a set of numbers. And as much as I would like to escape to Alaska or Costa Rica and declare that I am not a number, here I am, still stuck in the Village.

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "What Data Can’t Do" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/opinion/brooks-what-data-cant-do.html?_r=0), David Brooks observes the limitations of data:

• "Data struggles with the social"
• "Data struggles with context"
• "Data creates bigger haystacks"
• "Big data has trouble with big problems"
• "Data favors memes over masterpieces"
• "Data obscures values"

So data has its limitations, but how do we flee this prison or achieve some sort of symbiosis?

Perhaps it is no accident that much of my working day involves a client in the life sciences that has sought to master mountains of data, much of which is not homogeneous, in an effort to understand life on a molecular level. Underlying this effort, however, is a complex set of social interactions among mathematicians, computer scientists and biologists, which cannot be reduced to numbers. Faced with a numerical onslaught, they have countered with intuitive collective insights and are emerging victorious.

You see, it's not all about data. There is indeed much that raw data cannot do.

Yes, I know: I am being eaten alive by cookies, which map my preferences and routines, no matter how often I "clean" my laptop. Yet I would like to believe that whatever value I bring to this world springs from associations and play that no computer could ever generate.

Hold on just one moment . . .

"Yes, dear? What's that you say? Ah, the garbage. I'll have it out in an instant, dear. No dear, I won't forget this time. Trust me, dear. When have I ever disappointed you?"
 

You know, garbage in, garbage out.

Maybe I should fire off an e-mail to David: Data also can't possibly fathom my 30-year relationship with my wife or take out the trash.

I am not a number, I am a free man!