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Seeing Like a Data Structure

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Re: Seeing Like a Data Structure

#21

Post by CyberDildonics »

abtinf wrote: post #6
szvsw wrote: post #4

Well written and engaging, but I think there is a lot more room to really explore what the sociological, techno-economic, power dynamic etc ramifications are of specific data structures. This doesn’t go too far beyond the surface level notion of data , and there are plenty of discussions of the historical significance of taxonomizing and “objectifying” and archiving and surveilling the world into data from Foucault t…

Word salad.

It really is, it seems more like satire of a comment than a comment.

Re: Seeing Like a Data Structure

#22

Post by Jensson »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #16
Zababa wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the author does not seem to know what a data structure is, or assume the reader does not know and won't mind.

Feels that if anything, the author is describing computational abstractions, not data structures per se. They mention the term in the text, but then continue to say "data structure" while talking about everything except data structures. For example: "a local cafe is no longer a community hangout but a data structure containing a menu, a list of reservation options, and a hundred 5-star ratings" This description is fo…

That sounds like a database, how is that not a data structure? And to that data structure the cafe is just a bunch of values, which he listed. That is how you see things like a data structure would.

Definition of data structure: "More precisely, a data structure is a collection of data values, the relationships among them, and the functions or operations that can be applied to the data".

Maybe you would want more generic data structures, but it is used accurately here.

Re: Seeing Like a Data Structure

#23

Post by richrichie »

barathr wrote: post #10
0xWTF wrote: post #9

How much you want to bet one or both of these folks saw patio11's Seeing Like a Bank here on Hacker News a few months ago, read it, then read Seeing Like a State, and then wrote this? Because I did the same thing (my version for my problem still in draft) https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/seeing-like-a-bank/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38180477 Also, Seeing Like a State seems to be something of an cult…

We started writing this essay about 3 years ago (and first read Seeing Like a State about 15 years ago -- it's a book that should be read and re-read many times). It takes time to write something this long, and if I could have I would have kept editing it for another year.

This is one of my favourite books.

Covid response is a perfect modern day example.

This book also convinced me that all that net zero interventions and other related exercises will end in a disaster.

Re: Seeing Like a Data Structure

#24

Post by avs733 »

Zababa wrote: post #14

> Two decades ago, in his book Seeing Like a State, anthropologist James C. Scott explored what happens when governments, or those with authority, attempt and fail to “improve the human condition.” Scott found that to understand societies and ecosystems, government functionaries and their private sector equivalents reduced messy reality to idealized, abstracted, and quantified simplifications that made the mess more…

>now we have fair trials at the state level.

Another framing is that we now have a larger and more formalized structure for trials that we perceive as more fair because it is more structured.

Re: Seeing Like a Data Structure

#25

Post by _glass »

szvsw wrote: post #4

Well written and engaging, but I think there is a lot more room to really explore what the sociological, techno-economic, power dynamic etc ramifications are of specific data structures. This doesn’t go too far beyond the surface level notion of data , and there are plenty of discussions of the historical significance of taxonomizing and “objectifying” and archiving and surveilling the world into data from Foucault t…

In my PhD thesis I am doing this, but at an organizational level, how algorithms are managed and organized, i.e., via task lists, inside of the system, e.g., the debugger, or virtual meetings. There was a clear discovery of the movement away from the code, but also that we should really think about how the algorithm sees things, and how it is taking on a subjectivity on its own, as an actor.

This approach is postmodern, by describing hyper-reality, so taking in things that management theory would approach as only superficial, and putting this into the foreground. Your idea is actually brilliant, to go one step further and check the individual implementation details. I think there is some work about algorithms, but mostly for the AI case.

Re: Seeing Like a Data Structure

#26

Post by kyle-rb »

I get the idea, but a lot of these examples seem dubious to me. Between Facebook's advertiser interest groups and Tiktok's "uncanny" subconscious-tapping For You page, the Spotify example is pretty benign?

> Spotify sees us like a data structure when it tries to play music it thinks we will like based on the likes of people who like some of the same music we like.

I see how data structures figure into the implementation, but it's also easy to see how "music recommendations crowdsourced from people with similar taste" is a desirable goal. I'd assume that Spotify had to "restructure" its data to get this to provide better recommendations and run more efficiently.

I think you'd have a much easier time selling the dystopian/soulless vibe looking at Pandora and their Music Genome Project [0] (even if it actually provides really good recommendations, in my experience anyway).

Other examples I just don't see where the data structure is. "Thai Food Near Me" is SEO-optimized or whatever, but in the end it's just a catchy name, not really materially different from calling your shop "World's Best Cup of Coffee".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_Genome_Project

Re: Seeing Like a Data Structure

#27

Post by walterbell »

szvsw wrote: post #12
abtinf wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Word salad.

Sorry! More succinctly: the authors explore politics of data, as opposed to politics of data structures . I’m curious what the latter would really look like.

Any recommendations from other writers on "politics of data"?

Re: Seeing Like a Data Structure

#28

Post by walterbell »

richrichie wrote: post #23
barathr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We started writing this essay about 3 years ago (and first read Seeing Like a State about 15 years ago -- it's a book that should be read and re-read many times). It takes time to write something this long, and if I could have I would have kept editing it for another year.

This is one of my favourite books. Covid response is a perfect modern day example. This book also convinced me that all that net zero interventions and other related exercises will end in a disaster.

> will end in a disaster

Sadly, not before migration of earnings and control.

Re: Seeing Like a Data Structure

#29

Post by walterbell »

photochemsyn wrote: post #8

The one data structure that crops up again and again when looking at complex systems is the graph. Nodes on the graph represent the components and elements like state variables (e.g. population, resources, temperature, servers and clients, etc.) of the system, and edges between nodes represent interconnections, e.g. flows of matter, energy or information between nodes. A good introduction to this way of looking at th…

> alien civilization whose mathematics began with graphs

They might be pleased by 2024 silicon for matrix (a.k.a. graph/AI) math: Apple, Qualcomm, Intel and AMD devices with 30-100 TOPS NPU.

https://github.com/topics/social-network-analysis

Re: Seeing Like a Data Structure

#30

Post by whimsicalism »

richrichie wrote: post #23
barathr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We started writing this essay about 3 years ago (and first read Seeing Like a State about 15 years ago -- it's a book that should be read and re-read many times). It takes time to write something this long, and if I could have I would have kept editing it for another year.

This is one of my favourite books. Covid response is a perfect modern day example. This book also convinced me that all that net zero interventions and other related exercises will end in a disaster.

early stringent covid responses(such as in China) probably saved millions of lives in the responsive countries, but i guess post-covid will be litigated with vibes not numbers
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