Data and Us
Data Science is the hottest buzzword in the market. Businesses are investing heavily in analytics. With so much data and strong analytics tools at their disposal, companies are looking to make most of their decision making data driven. In one of his talks Josh Long said that when a business operates through software, it eventually becomes a software company. And frankly i think that's true with Data Analytics too. Marketing, Logistics, Operations, Strategy, everything is going to be assisted or maybe completely managed by prediction models. A company's success will eventually depend upon it's Data Analytics capabilities.
But what I am interested about is Creative Decision Making. Will creative people still lead the market with innovation and disruptive ideas? Seems like so, Data Analytics is only good at providing insights and predictions based on current/past situation, it can't predict when somebody is going to have a new disruptive idea which will change the patterns which were identified by the prediction model. But what if the constant in this argument "creative people" is not a constant at all. How is this unique capability of humans going to be affected in a world driven by data? what if "creative people" change?
The effects of social media recommendations are pretty evident about how they can strengthen your opinions by recommending material that you already like and agree with. It guides your intellectual development is a certain direction by providing continuous validation of your beliefs. But using social media is a choice, you may somehow survive it's effects, but you can't run from wider influence of Analytics on your decision making. In a world full of options, which are increasing everyday, we are just not capable of exploring everything, we have to rely upon various recommendation engines be it google, any other search engine, or user recommendations by a website/app to make our decisions. Most applications designed to provide personalized experience collect user data to provide recommendations according to his interests(which are merely deduced from his previous decisions). A mind so overwhelmed by the information boom, always surrounded by multitude of options, and a decision process so much dependent on algorithms that wouldn't let us make disruptive decisions and break away from a pattern, can definitely lead to a less utilized, intellectually inferior and more importantly, trained brain. The decisions I am talking about are not just about selecting a dress, or a couch or a trimmer online, but also the personal assist apps like google calendar automatically scheduling activities for you, or alexa selecting music for you, grammarly providing suggestions etc helping you figure out the most routine tasks. How will such a brain, trained to always decide according to certain patterns, develop it's thinking capabilities and come up with new ideas, maybe experts can tell. For now, i am deeply concerned about these questions, because at the pace the technology is breaching our lives, i don't think we'll stand a chance to do anything about it once Analytics driven models have made their way to political decision making, legislature, public and private institutions, because then it would be too big a problem to be solved with less capable minds.
Maybe we'll simply adapt. But this is not merely a behavioural adaptation that is required, but a biological adaptation which brings our brain at par with the technology which we are supposed to operate and utilize. I don't think we have ever witnessed a biological adaptation at the pace at which technology is advancing.
Maybe I am thinking too much, and plus I am no expert on these matters, so i should sleep now. But this is Interesting.
