Quite a night, quite a thought. I was alone, but my mind was together with other. Other thoughts, quite a number of questions. I knew I wanted something permanent, somewhere permanent on my fleeting body. It hit me, it hit me in the middle. I saw a valley, where I can be a river. I saw a valley where the mountains represent both liberty, and chains.
I was inclined to ask, am I data? And data alone? I did not mean that in a sense that I saw myself as a computer simulation, no. I meant that in a way that prompts me to ask if my being is only data? Will I be reduced, at some point, to a dataset? I asked myself that, and saw how my characteristics can be measured, and reduced to numbers. But is my corresponding dataset the same with my being? Does it capture who I am? As a researcher, we are taught that no data can be a perfect representation of an entity, let alone a complex reality. There will always be limitations; attributes that we miss.
These questions liberated me. For one, it made me hopeful that there are pathways to better understanding myself, and the world around me. It made me see how we are not measuring, and coding enough. The world around us, and its inhabitants can be codified. In a codified world, we can perhaps navigate easier, faster, and more seamlessly. In a codified world, power can be decentralized to each of us; because each will be an agent of reality, and a valuable piece of the bigger puzzle. In a codified world, we need not to worry about getting lost, or making poor choices. Each decision can present a pathway, and we can be guided by probabilities where can base our decisions on. In a codified world, we can ease ourselves the burden of trusting in our intuition; our intuition that we never gave time to nurture.
But all the more, these questions chained me. Knowing how something can possibly impact your life, and not being able to get out of it or do something about is is one of the shackles that imprison us the most. However, ignorance also does not offer a better road; it is also a high road of a different kind of chains. Knowing this chained me to my fears of being reduced, and being restricted. In a codified world where probably we will see a great rise in solutionism, we will be spending money, energy, thought, and emotions on solutions that do not even address anything substantial. If at all, we will be asked, forced to look away, and keep giving ourselves away. As we continue to ignore the reality that our beings, and the creation around us are being coded, we will fail to ask the critical questions.
Was codifying the best way to conquer the futures? Was turning our beings into datasets the only way we can better understand who we are? Was measuring the vastness of creation, and the limitless everything the most appropriate way to represent life?
Calling to an Alley
Quite a night, quite a thought
I was alone, but my mind was together
With the worries of singularity
They were many, and nameless
They called me to an alley
Telling me everyone is there
I quivered at the thought
Of being left, and having nothing
But I shivered all the more
At the thought of sharing my being
To everyone, everyone but myself
I deferred, I said I needed time
I wanted to embrace my being
The things I did not know
The stories I forgot
But somehow I am sure are still there
I turned my back on the alley
But I never stopped thinking about it
Since then
WEARENOTDATA 