waiting for the football

Busy day in the office with various meetings, software troubleshooting and preparation for the next workshop session. Unsurprisingly, preparation time fell a little short. I do have some more time tomorrow.

Finished book #6, Das Digital by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger und Thomas Ramge on data capitalism. I think the English title is Reinventing Capitalism in the Age of Big Data. Rowan found the book in one of the many Verschenke boxes. 

In many ways I found the book very annoying and naive, on the other hand they did try to paint a positive picture. They see the risk of centralisation, both of power and decision making and argue for making data more widely available, even in form of taxes paid in data. I don't share their optimism that the naturally monopoly forming digital world can be broken up and distributed. The thing I disagreed most with is that they suggest that access to data together with machine processing will allow us to make better decisions. Apart from becoming transparent and open to manipulation, I fundamentally question the need for making better decisions on a personal level. In fact I think one problem with our consumer world is that we are forced to make lots of meaningless decisions (should I buy shampoo A or B?). We don't need machines to help us with that. Fewer choices would do the same trick (obviously there is the problem of who gets to decide what is available). I've solved this problem by remembering what I decided to do the last time. I very much agree with them that we need to put being human into the centre of everything we do and that we need to decide which way our world should go.