We've been thinking about the data cloud in the Lounge these days. "What data cloud?" you may ask, and well that you should: it's a term relatively new to English and it hasn't yet settled down to a single fixed meaning. The data cloud we've been thinking about is the Big One: the nebulous dataset consisting of all the data that is, in principle, at your fingertips when they are poised above an Internet-connected keyboard.
In particular, we've been thinking about that part of the data cloud that ordinary folks are the authors of. These days, so many entities -- roughly, those that are designated as "Web 2.0" phenomena -- invite us to upload, store, share, label, tag, and comment on our own and other folks' data.
We've been pondering the various sets of words that English now employs to talk about aspects of the data cloud: how we interact with it, how we characterize its operations, and how we consider the implications of its existence, even if we don't understand them all very well. A while back, in The New Food, we explored the way in which a number of food terms have morphed into meanings commonly associated with information technology. That's an example of how English -- like other modern languages, we suspect -- is quite economical in dealing with the data cloud. English has required relatively little new language for grappling with the new paradigm: instead, we simply put to work tried-and-true words that have proved amenable to having their meanings extended and applied to a new area of discourse. But what do these various bags of words -- of which food words are one example -- say about the data cloud and our relationship to it?
Let's start with the term "data cloud" itself. We don't know who the original coiner of this term is (we find hits online going back to about the turn of the 21st century), but we happily affix a gold star to his or her label for aptness. The data cloud does indeed have many of the features of a cloud: indistinct boundaries, the quality of being homogenous when viewed from a distance or from within, the sense that it hovers above us, and that it is constantly changing its indeterminate shape under the influence of forces much greater than an individual can command.
As real clouds exist in physical space, it seems inescapable to conceive of the data cloud as existing in space, or even of being a kind of space unto itself: it has addresses and locations; it can be both navigated and mined; we put things into it and take things out of it, though for these operations we use the mainly 20th century words upload and download. The persistent space metaphor that we use in dealing with the data cloud probably arises from many causes: our already established habit of talking about memory as if it existed in physical space; the fact that many function words in English (like prepositions) are grounded in spatial relations; and perhaps most of all, the fact that humans and their languages can't make much sense of anything that isn't grounded in time and space.
But we wonder, is there a deceptive simplicity in dealing with the data cloud as a notional space? Remember, the data cloud consists entirely of data. There's something slightly chilling in the definition of data: "a collection of facts from which conclusions may be drawn." Conclusions? What conclusions? And who's drawing them? These questions point to the dark underbelly of the data cloud and to another set of English words that have been given new life in talking about new technology. This set of words forces us to think about the data cloud as something other than a pretty, fluffy white thing that scuds across the horizon on a summer afternoon. The data cloud is home to a lot of curious things: bots, spiders, crawlers, gophers, and other critters that work tirelessly by night and day, sifting, indexing, collecting, comparing, and no doubt, drawing conclusions.
It's marvelous that various companies will give us multigigabytes of storage for our stuff free, or at only a nominal cost. But it's all information we're putting out there; whether it's our Gmail archive, our photostream on Flickr, our blog, or our financial records on our bank's bill paying facility. It's all data -- the food of the data cloud, the fodder from which conclusions can be drawn -- and in what other space would we leave valuable morsels lying about, knowing that various predatory critters were poised to feed on them?
We use familiar language in dealing with the data cloud because we need to make it familiar: we must have terms that enable us to talk about it in a way that makes sense to our time-and-space-bound brains, and we have to start from where we are. But the language that has developed about the data cloud seems to be a little compartmentalized now, and perhaps simplified in a way that allows us to think of the data cloud as something benign. We overlook the fact that we mix things in the notional space of the data cloud that we would never mix, or that we would make an effort to keep separate, in any real space. The data cloud really is something new under the sun. As we continue to internalize the implications of its existence, we wonder how our language-based metaphors about it will change.
Here are a couple of things we saw online (appropriately enough!) that got us started thinking about the data cloud. First, a diagram in Wired magazine that can be viewed interactively here:
http://www.wired.com/special_multimedia/2008/ff_secretlife_1602
Secondly, we saw an article in Forbes magazine. The line that caught our eye in this article was "...the development of the Nexus 7000, a network switch that's capable of routing 15 terabits of data per second -- the equivalent of moving the entire contents of Wikipedia in a hundredth of a second, or downloading every movie available on Netflix in about 40 seconds." This led us to a description of the product in question:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps9402/index.html
What we liked most about this page was watching the "video data sheet," in which a Cisco executive talks in deadpan, matter-of-fact tones about the brave new world of high-speed data transfer. It's good medicine if you're inclined to think that the data cloud just happens!
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Comments from our users:
- are there enough people who deal with the changes consciously in view of preparing us to get paired with the changes?
- which conclusions may these people drawn from the insights they get?
- "Data Cloud" is just one of the many "notions" to come. How will we act on this level?
into the possibilities of the sharing of pictorial images that can be drawn together to achieve a gestalt of mind blowing proportions. It reveals some of the possibilities for our 'connected' world of perceptions.
As Dan suggests, there is a risk of overload, but I believe we will grow into the possibilities very quickly.
If you are unfamiliar with the Ted Talks, I apologise in advance for all the time that you will spend there!
"When we needed to adapt to a changing environment, it is the unconscious evolution of our neo cortex that allowed us to become aware of the "objectivity" of the world, conversely, now that we need to adapt to an environment that we are transforming at an accelerated pace, it will be the conscious transformation of the Internet into a collective "techno cortex," that will potentially allow us to develop in time a pragmatic awareness of the " interconnectivity" of the same world."
To read more: http://gaudwin.spaces.live.com/?lc=1033 or Google "neo cortex." comments: gaudwin@rogers.com
Andre
NB I am French, and this has not yet been, and need to be, edited.
I have an interest in the interchange between a growing consciousness of our interconnectedness and a type of ordinary mysticism that lives outside monasteries and hermitages. This is closely related to another question: What does it mean to be human?
Is there anyone else with this interest?
As I interviewed the engineers who had designed it they of course used technical terms that were not understandable to me. Every time I encountered on of those I asked them to stop and explain it. Then they discovered a "game". They would use a term that meant something vague in the early development of the computer to describe a feature that had developed later in the process. If one had grown with that development process, one understood that the obsolete term could be substituted for something more precise in the later stage of development. It was very confusing to me at first until I realized what they were doing. So I stopped them and said, "Does Tektronix still have a generous profit sharing plan?" "Of course," was the answer. So I said, "Your game of using terms with several meanings is costing the company X dollars per hour." They got my point and stopped playing their game. They were more straightforward with me from that point on, using stories and examples to explain things to me.
That myopic orientation kept Tektronix from developing its early computer in the way that IBM brought the PC to the world a few years later. The point is that insider jargon can be a very efficient way of communicating inside the group. But words familiar only to insiders are almost useless to people outside the group.
Many years ago Harvey Cox wrote about "signals (meaning jargon) vs stories". His best example was the way that Jesus Christ used stories to make his point.
I personally think that we haven't taken the necessary approach for dealing with the changes. The specialists are still "single-minded" and the managers, entrepreneurs, politicians ... aren't used to position each concern in a global frame. In other words we weren't driven by human love of the universe anytime we start an activity. Therefore I just questioned whether there are enough people dealing efficiently with the changes. This attitude may give a direction to the question of Jerome.
The purpose of information is to inform. The use information can be to amuse, arouse, educate, advise, provide a basis of choice or decision and so on. Where, when and how we get information and the reliability of the data and how we then use it has become the fun and the burden offered by 'the cloud."
Back to the food analogy, each user is like the first guest at a banquet sufficient for a Super Bowl crowd. Where do I start and how do I stop?
The "data cloud" can only be applied to education (in the narrow sense of the word, as in a classroom with a teacher)as long as there are controls -checks and balances of sorts- to assure the proper quantity and quality of user input, response, support, and assessment. The ability of elementary and secondary level students to interchange ideas - not just written, but via video, audio, animation, and even live comparisons of individual ideas and findings, is no longer a futuristic notion, it is here now. What's needed is inspiration and funding for development. Although the Web 3.0 is relatively free for the end user, it costs a great deal of time and resources to ensure its proper execution. So far, I have not seen any serious major attempt at re-inventing the classroom by offering teachers and students data they can use, and the ability to expand their knowledge beyond the classroom in a very real and practical way.
The subject you address, while a bit off topic, interests me also. The more I read and consider, the more it seems the answers to our future peaceful survival are entwined in understanding our interconnectedness with each other and the whole of existance, rather than the dogmatic beliefs which tend to separate us.
The more information and ideas we consider with an open mind, the closer we may come to ultimate answers. This "data cloud" might be considered a seed example of an underlying "universal intelligence", a directive to a 'logical' connection to the spiritual needs of most humans, not to worship of course, but to accept as probable. There can be great comfort and inspiration in feeling kinship with everyone and everything.
In our human curiousity, we already comprise part of the overall solution. Believe in learning. Access the cloud? It cannot hurt...
I first encountered "data clouds" when working at the periphery of the telecoms industry. There the concept is used to summarize a universe of interactions and relationships only a few of which may be relevant to the concept at hand: a short hand for how we emerge briefly from the mass of undifferentiated consciousness to register, process and relay information in a continuous process.
I have no doubt that our "modes of consciousness" are evolving faster than ever before in human biological history. Nor do I doubt that in only a few generations humanity's perception of itself and of its living space will have significantly changed as will its sense of what is appropriate in interacting with this space.
Until then, I'm with Janice Sapp and Donna Phillips in trying to preserve a semblance of balance, if for no other reason at least that the human experiment should have every chance to succeed.
Maybe 'sea' would apply just as well/unwell. Or 'slime'..? Or 'habitat'..? (any suggestions?)
Words get picked up partly because they sound cool (eg cyberspace)but we should remember that, like atoms, waves, particles or descriptions of God, they're just metaphors - helpful but not literal.
Data clouds are neither grand, nor glorious, and possibly omminous simply because we have no possible method to deal with the consequences of reassociation. As Wilber **** put it, thought lags seriously behind analysis.