Datafication

Let’s talk about datafication. Statistics.  Moniters.  Metrics.  Whatever you want to call it, our society is rapidly becoming obsessed with crouching data. At work, we feed productivity numbers into a machine to track our progress.  WHAT progress, you may ask?  Well, don’t worry about it–if the numbers are green/orange/turquoise/whatever color you set to a positive collation on your spreadsheet, you’re making progress.

At home, we get e-mail updates from social media websites, comparing our ability to type nonsensical satire into the internet with the ability of everyone else in the world. I got an email from Facebook last week about my SOCIAL METRICS.  So, my social relationships should not be judged by the depth of my friendships, the value of my conversations, but by percentage lines comparing my popularity to everyone else IN THE WORLD. It’s like middle school on steroids out there.

The problem with all this data is people can’t process as fast as computers.  We are on a major precipice.  If we drop I fear life will start flying by in a whirl of numbers we don’t understand. Fight. Breathe.  Put the fitbit DOWN you rabid data zombie!  Read The Circle by Dave Eggers (or at least read about it here.  I get it, no time to read with all the rampant Facebook posting one must do to compete in the mercurial barometer of social metrics) and consider the consequences of this rampant datafication.  Who is collecting this information and why? Post your thoughts below.

For a post on the importance of a different number (my, ahem, twenty-ish-sort-of age) click here.