Article by Natasha Joshi: “…But what do we stand to lose when we privilege data science over human understanding?
C Thi Nguyen explains this through ‘value capture’. It is the process by which “our deepest values get captured by institutional metrics and then become diluted or twisted as a result. Academics aim at citation rates instead of real understanding; journalists aim for numbers of clicks instead of newsworthiness. In value capture, we outsource our values to large-scale institutions. Then all these impersonal, decontextualizing, de-expertizing filters get imported into our core values. And once we internalize those impersonalized values as our own, we won’t even notice what we’re overlooking.”
One such thing being overlooked is care.
Interpersonal caregiving makes no sense from a market lens. The person with power and resources voluntarily expends them to further another person’s well-being and goals. The whole idea of care is oceanic and hard to wrap one’s head around. ‘Head’ being the operative word, because we are trying to understand care with our brains, when it really exists in our bodies and is often performed by our bodies.
Data tools have only inferior ways of measuring care, and by extension designing spaces and society for it.
Outside of specific, entangled relationships of care, humans also have an amorphous ability to feel that they are part of a larger whole. We are affiliated to humanity, the planet, and indeed the universe, and feel it in our bones rather than know it to be true in any objective way.
We see micro-entrepreneurs, inventors, climate stewards, and scores of people, both rich and poor, across circumstances who engage in collective care to make the world a better place. This kind of pro-sociality doesn’t always show in ways that is tangible or immediate or measurable.
Datavism, which we seem to have learned from bazaar, has convinced capital allocators that the impact of social programmes can and should be expressed arithmetically. And, based on those calculations, acts of care can be deemed successful or unsuccessful…(More)”.
