The second-to-last company at which I worked before escaping my captivity as an office worker was proudly, vehemently, obstinately, Data Driven. Now, my designs at this establishment did not extend beyond doing just enough to collect my check each month and keep my work visa for the remaining few years that I needed one before gaining my ILR in the UK, and so whatever frivolous propaganda they were using to better exploit their workforce did not enter my thoughts. Until of course, it began to affect me personally.
It began with being asked to add Tracking Events, little pieces of code that would register a user's specific action (click, hover, hold, shake violently, etc.) in an internal database. In terms of additional workload, this was negligible so I thoughtlessly obliged. Then, each week the team’s Data Analyst would present the rest of us with various graphs and charts and tables containing information of varying irrelevance, even if I did care about this so-called Product.
What made me begin to care a little was slowly coming to the realisation of who The Customers were, and how exactly The Company was making money off of them.
The day-to-day work of a software engineer tends to look identical regardless of what company it is you end up working for. This, in combination with my knowledge that this Career was just a holdover to serve the specific purpose of providing me a steady paycheck and appropriate documentation to live in a developed economy where I could pursue my true goals, meant that I had never cared what type of business my employer engaged in. There had been a train booking platform, something to do with financial due diligence, an enterprise e-commerce API, and an Automated Direct Mail Marketing company (do not ask me what that entails, I hardly remember and barely knew at the time to begin with). They had all been differing shades of boring and meaningless, but always benign. Which is what I had thought of the Data-Driven company when I joined. The sheep I was told when interviewing, as is what is told to all customers, investors, and the similarly gullible public, was that it was a financial management app. There was no mention of how they made any money, but that was not unusual for a startup, and so I accepted their offer. For no other reason than they paid slightly more than the train booking platform, and my manager at the latter had been getting on my nerves.
What I slowly found out during my short tenure there was that the 28-year-old CEO of over 100 people had no idea how they were going to make any money either. That was, until he began to look at the data, being so driven by it after all. What he found was that most of the people using this “financial management” application tended to be “Financially insecure,” which I believe is a word used by the rich because even saying the word “poor” out loud disgusts them too much. He then apparently went through a process of collecting more data from said poor people in the form of focus groups and questionnaires, asking them what they wanted from a financial app.
As someone seemingly divorced from the human condition himself, he was very intrigued to find that what poor people wanted most was enough money to live with some sense of dignity. And so he devised The Company’s primary revenue stream: Short-term, high-interest loans. The actors who usually provide such services are referred to as ‘loan sharks,’ but because this outfit was operated by a man of a certain class and creed, this company has been described as “a part of the open banking revolution.”
And so, through the rigorous use of data, a directionless idiot was able to devise a way to best take advantage of some of the most vulnerable among us.
Now, I should have left upon coming to this realisation. That I did not is an act of selfish self-preservation and a moral failing. Acting according to my ideals in all aspects of my life is a luxury I have only recently been able to comfortably afford, and I am thoroughly enjoying it. I was, however, fired soon after for insubordination, I believe as penance. At least in part.
Much is made of theories that the people in various positions of power actively conspire to exploit and abuse the public in whatever way they can. I have never subscribed to them. Only because I cannot fathom that any of these people are intelligent or organised enough to pull off such a feat. I’ve met them. I’ve met the still-somewhat-pubescent-but-somehow-already-balding CEO of the Data Driven Company. I’ve met the Swedish billionaire CEO of the final company I worked for before my escape. Met him and even managed to resist the urge to kidnap and hold him for ransom. And having met them, I have seen up close that their sins are less the result of evil machinations and more the spawn of simple greed and thoughtlessness.
And data has allowed for this. The villains of the world used to have to hatch an ingenious scheme to exact their plans, but Data has made the process accessible to idiots. Which poses risk for the rest of us. Because a well-thought-out plot will have the damage it is intended to. But an ill-conceived one is bound to not work and yet, still have. Collateral damage that exceeds its creator's wildest dreams. It is one thing to be caught unaware and exploited. But another altogether to willingly offer oneself up. Which is what I cannot help but witness happening all around me in the form of people in their thirties being eager to give up as much physiological data to whichever broker has the most hideous wearable tech device. I have heard multiple theories as to why people seem to have turned their endless need for control towards their own bodies: a perceived lack of control over one’s external environment, financial inability to have children, people putting the weight of their unmet dreams on themselves rather than their proposed kin; lack of originality. I do not posit to know the minds of others, but I can see in the world what they are doing. And they are measuring. Heart rate, heart rate variability, body fat percentage, steps walked per day, calories burned during intercourse, etc.
I know people; Good, decent, hard-working people; People whom I would count amongst my friends; that wear a smartwatch. Every day. By choice. Now I can’t imagine what these companies are doing with this information, but from experience I feel comfortable positing that it is unlikely to be in the better interest of the public.
And worst of all, it is such a deeply unsensual way to live. To divorce yourself from any real self-observation and rather outsource the task to a little machine. And an ugly one at that. For the sake of Optimisation. And to what end? To better complete your tasks as a corporate worker? Or to live longer? These might be the words of a man still in the former half of his life (statistically speaking), but I have not yet seen the value of a decade more of life if in exchange I must commit to many multiple decades of being an absolute bore.
There is, however, no arena of life in which I find the use of data more abhorrent than in Art. The closest thing to data that has its place in the process of making a work of art is the Artist’s experience and understanding of their internal state. Their memories, emotions, opinions, and the like. Maybe, in the case of live performance, this might also include the feelings and reactions of the audience (to a limited, but important extent). But neither of these even constitute objective data, but rather indelibly subjective recounting. Because a piece of art is an imposition on the future, and data can only comment on what is past. And while what is past can provide context, it rather carries authorial weight. Or should not, at least. I am on occasion told that eventually AI (which in itself, at least for now, is little more than the output of a statistical inference on provided past data) will be able to do standup. And it might even. In some form. But it won’t be able to do it the way I do it. Which is really all that matters. At least for myself, given that a certain threshold of craft and rigor are present in a piece of work, most of my experience and enjoyment of it exists in relation to how it expresses the Artist’s internal state. And of course, how that state reacts with my own. It is telling that people feel betrayed and disenthused when they find a musician they have been enjoying is in fact a machine-created farce. That through this knowledge their enjoyment of the music itself is diminished.
It is unfortunate that because of the inundation of data-driven this and that, resisting it cannot be done passively. Although the effort is worth it. Because even though I don’t think those pulling the strings are smart enough to plan it all out themselves, enough submission to data can quickly take one from Data Driven to Data Dependent.
