Redefining Reality - The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science

In these lectures, we’ve seen that our picture of reality tends to proceed
through a three-step development process. First, we see an atomistic
world made up of individual entities. We learn about reality by examining
these objects one by one. Then, we move to a relational picture, in which we
attribute reality to relations among objects and understand it in the context
of those relationships. Finally, we see reality as an interconnected web, in
which what is real is the whole, with the seeming individuals being elements
of the whole. In this lecture, we’ll look at data analytics as the realization of
this last step in the realm of technological developments.
With the advent of computers, cell phones, and the Internet, vast
amounts of data became available about how people interact
in our natural and social environments. And with the increase in
processing power, computers could search for relationships that no
one would have expected but that were extraordinarily explanatory.
This was the birth of predictive analytics, also known as data
mining and big data.
All major companies now have departments of data analytics
they can use this information to get you to spend more money.
Police departments and government agencies, phone companies,
and Internet search engines all keep tabs on us to collect and
analyze data.
Many of us worry about outsiders reading our e-mail messages
or listening in on our phone conversations, but those shouldn’t
be our concerns. The real information that lets other people know
everything about us isn’t in what we write or say; that tells others
only what we think we’ll do. The real truth is in the so-called
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