64
4 Google as God?
device, even if that mobile device is turned off. You know this, I hope? Yes?
Well, you should… Since you can’t connect dots you don’t have, it drives us
into a mode of, we fundamentally try to collect everything and hang on to it
forever… It is really very nearly within our grasp to be able to compute on all
human generated information.”
Will this massive data-collection process be good for the world, helping us to
eliminate terrorism, crime, and other societal ills? Will it allow us to turn our society
into a perfect clockwork and overcome the mistakes that people make? Or will so
much information create even bigger problems?
4.1 Technology to Empower a “Wise King”?
Imagine you are the president of a country and aim to maximize the welfare of its
people. What would you do? You would probably want to prevent financial crashes,
economic crises, social problems and wars. You would like to ensure a safe and
reliable supply of food, water and energy. You would perhaps try to prevent environmental degradation. You may wish people to be rich, happy and healthy. You
may further like to avoid problems such as traffic jams, corruption, and drug abuse.
In sum, you would probably like to create a prosperous, sustainable and resilient
society.
What would it take to achieve all of this? You would certainly need to take the
right decisions and avoid those that would imply harmful, unintended side effects.
For each impending decision you would need to know alternative courses of action
that could be taken and their associated opportunities and risks. For your country to
thrive, you would need to avoid ideological or impulsive decision-making and let
data-based evidence guide your actions. In order to have enough information for this
type of decision-making, you would need a lot of data about all quantifiable aspects
of life and society, and excellent data analysts to interpret it. You might even decide
to collect all the data in the world (as much as this can be done), just in case it might
be useful one day to counteract threats and crises, or to exploit opportunities that
might arise.
In the past, rulers and governments haven’t had this possibility: they often lacked
the quality or quantity of data needed to take well-informed decisions. But this is
now changing. In recent decades, the processing power of computers has exploded,
and the volume of stored data has dramatically increased. Each year, we are now
generating as much data in the world as in the entire history of humankind.
2 What
could we do with all this data?
2 Knowledge doubling every 12 months, soon to be every 12 hours, see http://www.industrytap.
com/knowledge-doubling-every-12-months-soon-to-be-every-12-hours/3950.
4 Google as God?
device, even if that mobile device is turned off. You know this, I hope? Yes?
Well, you should… Since you can’t connect dots you don’t have, it drives us
into a mode of, we fundamentally try to collect everything and hang on to it
forever… It is really very nearly within our grasp to be able to compute on all
human generated information.”
Will this massive data-collection process be good for the world, helping us to
eliminate terrorism, crime, and other societal ills? Will it allow us to turn our society
into a perfect clockwork and overcome the mistakes that people make? Or will so
much information create even bigger problems?
4.1 Technology to Empower a “Wise King”?
Imagine you are the president of a country and aim to maximize the welfare of its
people. What would you do? You would probably want to prevent financial crashes,
economic crises, social problems and wars. You would like to ensure a safe and
reliable supply of food, water and energy. You would perhaps try to prevent environmental degradation. You may wish people to be rich, happy and healthy. You
may further like to avoid problems such as traffic jams, corruption, and drug abuse.
In sum, you would probably like to create a prosperous, sustainable and resilient
society.
What would it take to achieve all of this? You would certainly need to take the
right decisions and avoid those that would imply harmful, unintended side effects.
For each impending decision you would need to know alternative courses of action
that could be taken and their associated opportunities and risks. For your country to
thrive, you would need to avoid ideological or impulsive decision-making and let
data-based evidence guide your actions. In order to have enough information for this
type of decision-making, you would need a lot of data about all quantifiable aspects
of life and society, and excellent data analysts to interpret it. You might even decide
to collect all the data in the world (as much as this can be done), just in case it might
be useful one day to counteract threats and crises, or to exploit opportunities that
might arise.
In the past, rulers and governments haven’t had this possibility: they often lacked
the quality or quantity of data needed to take well-informed decisions. But this is
now changing. In recent decades, the processing power of computers has exploded,
and the volume of stored data has dramatically increased. Each year, we are now
generating as much data in the world as in the entire history of humankind.
2 What
could we do with all this data?
2 Knowledge doubling every 12 months, soon to be every 12 hours, see http://www.industrytap.
com/knowledge-doubling-every-12-months-soon-to-be-every-12-hours/3950.