Journal #10, Aug 3

Data Deluge

Once again I’m writing another journal about what I’m calling the word/ invention/ tool of the year if not the century: Google. When the author of this article goes into the different eras and how first computers changed the way we use and look at data, and then the internet, and then internet search engines, I just couldn’t relate. I’ve grown up using computers, the internet, and google. I’ve never really had to do any type of research without the use of the internet and the ideal of it scares me. And as far as those cards people used to use in the library to find books….I still can’t quite grasp how they worked. I mean how could use possible be able to search for books using genres or keywords with cards? But I digress, in the article they speak very much so of models and how they are now, in my words not the author’s, passé. Even growing up in this information age I can’t possible understand how models, what I’ve been taught is the basis of most of what we know to be true in science, can be put to bed and a thing of the past. Yes data lies what you already see out, but models are what make them make sense and shows you what the data means. Data by itself is not information but the basis for information. I can look at a table of data on anything for hours and hours but it takes a model, a theory, to make it make sense to me, to explain to me what this data is saying. Without a model I can take what I want to take out of data, not what is meant to take out of data. I understand the way we view and use data has changed, and for the most part for the better, but to absolutely wipe out the model to me is absurd to say the least.

http://amundblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/rebirth-of-confounding-and-theory-in.html