LONGECITY

In the next two blog posts I’ll attempt to sketch the forces behind what I’m calling, somewhat sensationally, the Data Singularity, and then (in a following post) discuss what I see as its consequences.

In a nutshell, the Data Singularity is this: humans are being spliced out of the data-driven processes around us, and frequently we aren’t even at the terminal node of action. International cargo shipments, high-frequency stock trades, and genetic diagnoses are all made without us.
Absent humans, these data and decision loops have far less friction; they become constrained only by the costs of bandwidth, computation, and storage– all of which are dropping exponentially.

The result is an explosion of data thrown off from these machine-mediated pipelines, along with data about those flows (and data about that data, and so on). The machines all around us — our smart phones, smart cars, and fee-happy bank accounts — are talking, and increasingly we’re being left out of the conversation.

So whether or not the Singularity is Near, the Data Singularity is here, and its consequences are being felt...