Friday, April 19, 2019
Wrong zettaquestions
Econ websites and econ talkers are constantly trying to "humanize" huge numbers by comparing the numbers to something or other. Stacks of dollar bills, etc.
This ZH piece compares the total amount of data we generate to something or other.
All such comparisons are INTENTIONAL DISTRACTIONS. It doesn't matter if the total amount is 999 zettabytes or 999 grotabytes. Doesn't matter if 500 million identities were hacked or 672.135 xorgillion identities were hacked.
The number is BIG. BIG is all you need to know.
What DOES matter is how the number is USED. Who owns the national debt? Who weaponizes the data? Who buys the hacked identities?
In the specific case of data, we have ALWAYS generated huge amounts of data. Every business and household and governmental unit in a modern country keeps records of its transactions. The important point is WHERE those records are kept. Before 2000, most were kept LOCALLY in ledgers and checkbooks and filing cabinets and privately owned computers. Now most of the records are kept in Amazon's cloud servers, where Amazon and NSA can access them instantly, alter and delete the records when desired, and use them for blackmail.
As long as we "try to imagine" an unimaginable number, we aren't asking the important questions.
All of our current goals and purposes are PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE. Forcing people to work toward PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE goals is the best way to kill them.
Labels: Real World Math, Unasked and unanswered
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