Sometimes you read something and you just want to get drunk with the person who wrote it and laugh into the deep night. This is one of those times. “Data, Adapt or Die!“
I feel really badly for the Big Data gurus who painstakingly schlepped their love of data around digital-venues such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Forbes and other professional comedic-stages only to be slapped right-up the side of the head by data’s callous disrespect for prosaic, opportunistic and populist characters.
So, why hasn’t data adapted in the way we wanted it to?
First, because it is arrogant, ignorant and amoral. That’s why. And secondly, because there is so much of it. We’re surrounded by it. It’s become the digital enemy within, without and betwixt.
But it goes far deeper than that. We have been massively permissive with data; too obsequious; too impetuous; and, too rash.
We have allowed data to become uncontrollably Marxist, communalist and collectivist. So, be afraid, very afraid and hold these powerful thought-snippets in your head: “Enterprise Data Factory”, “Das Data Kapital” and “data workers of the world integrate”.
I might come back to these in just a moment.
But to loosely paraphrase Marx “It is not the consciousness of data that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their being that determines their mindfulness; sort of.”
And this is what we have let data do. We have let data live their own social lives which has inevitably led to bad things, unintended consequences and undesired patterns of behaviour.
Do you see where I am coming from with this?
We thought data integration would help create a great and good data melting-pot, a great cauldron full of nourishing, life-giving data-soup of which we all could avail ourselves.
It didn’t work, we were wrong. So sad.