All the Little Data

Nicholas Carr:

little data—all those fleeting, discrete bits of information that swarm around us like gnats on a humid summer evening.

Our apps have recruited us all into the arcane fraternity of the logistics manager and the process-control engineer…[of] our own existence.

What we don’t see when we see the world as information are qualities of being—ambiguity, contingency, mystery, beauty—that demand perceptual and emotional depth and the full engagement of the senses and the imagination. It hardly seems a coincidence that we find ourselves uncomfortable discussing or even acknowledging such qualities today. In their open-endedness, they defy datafication.

We love UIs because they make us the star. In a UI, you are the center of the world. In the world, you are a speck, just one of many.

Little data tell us little stories in which we play starring roles. When I track a package as it hopscotches across the country from depot to depot, I know that I’m the prime mover in the process—the one who set it in motion and the one who, when I tear open the box, will bring it to a close. That little white arrowhead traveling so confidently across the map on the dashboard? That’s me. I’m going somewhere. I’m worth watching. When I monitor the advance of a song’s progress bar, I know I can stop the music anytime, purely at my whim. I’m the DJ. I’m the tastemaker. I say when one tune ends and the next begins. So lovingly personalized, so indulgent, little data put us at the center of things. They tell us that we have power, that we matter.

Thus:

when we communicate using little data, we’re speaking the language of robots.