My PhD research on the epistemological shifts that accompany the rise of the digital age
has alerted me to the high value the digital civilisation puts on turning the non-
quantifiable aspects of our lives and our experience into quantified, computer-ready
data. I have become more aware of the numerous deleterious consequences of this
phenomenon.
Qualitative dimensions of life such as emotions, relationships or intuitive perceptions (to
name a few) which draw upon a rich array of tacit knowing/feeling/sensing common to
all of life are undermined and depreciated. In many areas of decision-making at the
individual and collective levels, the alleged neutrality of the process of digital
quantification is put forward as an antidote to the biases of the human mind, unreliable
as it is encumbered by emotions and prejudices. While certain areas of the economy
lend themselves to quantitative measurement, most crucial aspects of the experience of
living do not.
There is a logical fallacy in the belief that digital data are neutral. They are produced in
and by social, cultural, economic, historical (etc) contexts and consequently carry the
very biases present in those contexts. There is a logical fallacy in the belief that
algorithms are neutral. They are highly designed to optimise certain outcomes and fulfil
certain agendas which, more often than not, do not align with the greater good.
Far from being a revolution, the blind ideological faith in digital data is directly inherited from the
statistical and mechanistic mindset of the Industrial Revolution and supports the
positivist view that all behaviours and sociality can be turned into hard data. The
enterprise of eradicating uncertainty and ambiguity under the guise of so-called scientific
measurement is such an appealing proposition for so many economic actors that we
have come to forget what makes us human.
A civilisation that has devalued and forgotten the humanness of being human is a lost civilisation.