The Guardian: Machine logic: our lives are ruled by big tech’s ‘decisions by data’
Machine logic: our lives are ruled by big tech’s ‘decisions by data’
In the early 1970s, Hannah Arendt wrote a devastating critique of the Pentagon’s Vietnam-era penchant for policy by counting. “The problem-solvers did not judge,” she wrote. “They calculated.” Exuding the spirit of gamblers rather than statesmen, the decision-makers played “the percentage game”, counting whatever could be counted and ignoring the rest, or the underlying problems, with “an utterly irrational confidence in the calculability of reality”.
Machine logic: our lives are ruled by big tech’s ‘decisions by data’
In the early 1970s, Hannah Arendt wrote a devastating critique of the Pentagon’s Vietnam-era penchant for policy by counting. “The problem-solvers did not judge,” she wrote. “They calculated.” Exuding the spirit of gamblers rather than statesmen, the decision-makers played “the percentage game”, counting whatever could be counted and ignoring the rest, or the underlying problems, with “an utterly irrational confidence in the calculability of reality”.
Source Information
Original Title: Machine logic: our lives are ruled by big tech’s ‘decisions by data’
External source: The Guardian
Author: Julia Powles
Publication date: 10/08/2016