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The complexity of reality and human computer confluence: stemming the data deluge by empowering human creativity

Published: 13 September 2011 Publication History

Abstract

Our ability to extract data from nature by far exceeds our ability to analyze let alone understand it. For good reasons this has been dubbed the data deluge [1, 2]. A standard solution is to develop computational systems that automate the analysis and storage of data in large-scale infrastructure initiatives [3]. The complexity of these petascale computational systems will practically follow that of the data they are build to analyze. On one hand, this trend in science to collect data because it is technology possible as opposed to being theoretically needed, has given rise to agnosticism towards the sources of data. Rather, the believe is that out of the accumulated mass of data, combined with an exact reconstruction of "reality" based on this data in some way knowledge and understanding will flow [4]. This leads to a science as a mechanical archival activity, where researchers accumulate data because it is possible as opposed to being contingent upon predictions and hypotheses. Borges captures the end of understanding that this entails well in his short story "On Exactitude in Science": "...and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it." [5]. This raises the fundamental question of how humans can reclaim the territory from the map and can stem the data deluge. One pragmatic and epistemologically sound approach would be to stop the mad dash for data and return to a hypothesis driven form of science. The second approach is to find new ways to interface human users to complex datasets and the systems that generate and analyze them in order to advance understanding of the sources of data.

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  • (2013)The Convergence of Machine and Biological IntelligenceIEEE Intelligent Systems10.1109/MIS.2013.13728:5(28-43)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2013

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  1. The complexity of reality and human computer confluence: stemming the data deluge by empowering human creativity

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        cover image ACM Other conferences
        CHItaly '11: Proceedings of the 9th ACM SIGCHI Italian Chapter International Conference on Computer-Human Interaction: Facing Complexity
        September 2011
        177 pages
        ISBN:9781450308762
        DOI:10.1145/2037296
        Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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        Published: 13 September 2011

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        CHItaly '11: Facing complexity
        September 13 - 16, 2011
        Alghero, Italy

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        CHItaly '11 Paper Acceptance Rate 29 of 59 submissions, 49%;
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        • (2013)The Convergence of Machine and Biological IntelligenceIEEE Intelligent Systems10.1109/MIS.2013.13728:5(28-43)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2013

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