Big Data, pois!

Basta pesquisar o marcador "big data" neste blogue para perceber facilmente o quanto desconfio do tema.
Por isso, foi com um enorme sorriso nos lábios que li "What's wrong with big data?" e descobri que a crença está ainda mais entranhada e é mais ingénua do que eu pensava. O artigo tem matéria para várias linhas de reflexão. Por exemplo:

"This belief in the power of data, of technology untrammelled by petty human worldviews, is the practical cousin of more metaphysical assertions. A belief in the unquestionability of data leads directly to a belief in the truth of data-derived assertions. And if data contains truth, then it will, without moral intervention, produce better outcomes. [Moi ici: Como não recordar este texto de Esko Kilpi que li recentemente "Your facts are not my facts"]
...
But you don’t need to look to such extreme examples to see how a belief in technological determinism underlies much of our thinking and reasoning about the world.
.
“Big data” is not merely a business buzzword, but a way of seeing the world. Driven by technology, markets and politics, it has come to determine much of our thinking, but it is flawed and dangerous. It runs counter to our actual findings when we employ such technologies honestly and with the full understanding of their workings and capabilities. This over-reliance on data, which I call “quantified thinking”, has come to undermine our ability to reason meaningfully about the world, and its effects can be seen across multiple domains.
...
Implicit in Moore’s Law is not only the continued efficacy of technological solutions, but their predictability, and hence the growth of solutionism: the belief that all of mankind’s problems can be solved with the application of enough hardware, software and technical thinking. Solutionism rests on the belief that all complex activities are reducible to measurable variables. [Moi ici: Tudo se resume a mais 900 mil imigrantes à la amador a jogar bilhar] Yet this is slowly being revealed as a fallacy, as our technologies become capable of processing ever larger volumes of data. In short, our engineering is starting to catch up with our philosophy.
...
The view that more information uncritically produces better decisions is visibly at odds with our contemporary situation.
...
 The world is not something we study neutrally, that we gather neutral knowledge about, on which we can act neutrally. Rather, we make the world by understanding it, and the way we understand it changes it.
...
“More information” does not produce “more truth”, it endangers it. We cannot stand as dispassionate observers of supposedly truth-making processes while they continue to fail to produce dispassionate ends."

Kilpi:

"Reality is no longer viewed as a singular fact of nature but as multiple and socially constructed. In a relational model, identity is constructed from being in relationships, being connected, as contrasted with the mainstream view of identity through separation. Knowledge of self and the other thus becomes viewed as co-constructed, the same way as our future is co-constructed."

Recordar Cavaco, os adultos e os factos.