Comment by richhickey
10 years ago
Without the 'idea' of data we couldn't even have a conversation about what interpreters interpret. How could it be a "really bad" idea? Data needn't be accompanied by an interpreter. I'm not saying that interpreters are unimportant/uninteresting, but they are separate. Nor have I said or implied that data is inherently meaningful.
Take a stream of data from a seismometer. The seismometer might just record a stream of numbers. It might put them on a disk. Completely separate from that, some person or process, given the numbers and the provenance alone (these numbers are from a seismometer), might declare "there is an earthquake coming". But no object sent an "earthquake coming" "message". The seismometer doesn't "know" an earthquake is coming (nor does the earth, the source of the 'messages' it records), so it can't send a "message" incorporating that "meaning". There is no negotiation or direct connection between the source and the interpretation.
We will soon be drowning in a world of IoT sensors sending context-or-provenance-tagged but otherwise semantic-free data (necessarily, due to constraints, without accompanying interpreters) whose implications will only be determined by downstream statistical processing, aggregation etc, not semantic-rich messaging.
If you meant to convey "data alone makes for weak messages/ambassadors", well ok. But richer messages will just bottom out at more data (context metadata, semantic tagging, all more data) Ditto, as someone else said, any accompanying interpreter (e.g. bytecode? - more data needing interpretation/execution). Data remains a perfectly useful and more fundamental idea than "message". In any case, I thought we were talking about data, not objects. I don't think there is a conflict between these ideas.
2nd Paragraph: How do they know they are even bits? How do they know the bits are supposed to be numbers? What kind of numbers? Relating to what?
Etc
It contravenes the common and historical use of the word 'data' to imply undifferentiated bits/scribbles. It means facts/observations/measurements/information and you must at least grant it sufficient formatting and metadata to satisfy that definition. The fact that most data requires some human involvement for interpretation (e.g. pointing the right program at the right data) in no way negates its utility (we've learned a lot about the universe by recording data and analyzing it over the centuries), even though it may be insufficient for some bootstrapping system you envision.
I think what Alan was getting at is that what you see as "data" is in fact, at its basis, just signal, and only signal; a wave pattern, for example, but even calling it a "wave pattern" suggests interpretation. What I think he's trying to get across is there is a phenomenon being generated by something, but it requires something else--an interpreter--to even consider it "data" in the first place. As you said, there are multiple ways to interpret that phenomenon, but considering "data" as irreducible misses that point, because the concept of data requires an interpreter to even call it that. Its very existence as a concept from a signal presupposes an interpretation. And I think what he might have been getting at is, "Let's make that relationship explicit." Don't impose a single interpretation on signal by making "data" irreducible. Expose the interpretation by making it explicit, along with the signal, in how one might design a system that persists, processes, and transmits data.
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I think in the Science of Process that is being related as a desirable goal, everything would necessarily be a dynamic object (or perhaps something similar to this but fuzzier or more relational or different in some other way, but definitely dynamic) because data by itself is static while the world itself is not.
Your selection of data is arbitrary.
Not only is your perception based on an interpreter, but how can you be sure that you were even given all of the relevant bits? Or, even what the bits really meant/are?
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