Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
If statistics continues to progress as it has done for several years, if
the information which it gives us continues to gain in accuracy, in
dispatch, in bulk, and in regularity, a time may come when
upon the
accomplishment of every social event a figure will at once issue
forth automatically, so to speak, to take its place on the statistical
registers that will be continuously communicated to the public and
spread abroad pictorially by the daily press
. Then, at every step, at
every glance cast upon poster or newspaper, we shall be assailed, as
it were, with statistical facts, with
precise and condensed knowledge
of all the peculiarities of actual social conditions, of commercial
gains or losses, of the rise or falling off of certain political parties,
of the progress or decay of a certain doctrine, etc.
, in exactly the
same way as we are assailed when we open our eyes by the vibrations
of the ether which tell us of the approach or withdrawal of such and
such a so-called body and of many other things of a similar nature.
— Tarde
Mark then laid down the theme of his lecture:
Change the instruments and you will change the entire social theory
that goes with them.
— Bruno Latour
Kind of like that
famous physics cat
,
Mark (and Tarde) want us to
newly consider both the way the structure of society changes as we
observe it, and ways of thinking about the relationship of the individ‐
ual to the aggregate.
In other words, the past nature of data collection methods forced one
to consider aggregate statistics that one can reasonably estimate by
subsample—means, for example. But now that one can actually get
one's hands on all data and work with all data, one no longer should
focus only on the kinds of statistics that make sense in the aggregate,
but also one's own individually designed statistics—say, coming from
graph-like interactions—that are now possible due to finer control.
Don't let the dogma that resulted from past restrictions guide your
thinking when those restrictions no longer hold.
Mark's Thought Experiment
As data become more personal, as we collect more data about indi‐
viduals, what new methods or tools do we need to express the funda‐
mental relationship between ourselves and our communities, our
communities and our country, our country and the world?
