Cover of Philosophy of Data: The Raw Material of Thought and the Collective Mind

Philosophy of Data: The Raw Material of Thought and the Collective Mind
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Philosophy of Data: The Raw Material of Thought and the Collective Mind

By: May Ling Lai
Narrated by: May Ling Lai
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Data. Everyone uses the word, and almost no one can define it.Ask the people who work with data every day what it is, and they reach for information, knowledge, or insight. Ask them to define information, and they hand the word data right back. For a field dedicated to catching errors of logic, that circular reference has gone unchallenged for a long time.Philosophy of Data proposes a new starting point: data is the raw material of thought. It is what a conscious mind produces when it encounters the world, decides something matters, and captures it. Under this definition, a lie in a database counts as data. So does a troll comment, a census category, or a tally mark on a bone. Truth and value are judgments made afterward. Data also gains a history that runs back to the first scratches on a cave wall, long before spreadsheets.Drawing on philosophy going back to Aristotle, the history of writing, and the factory floor from Ford to Deming to Tesla, and integrating Jung and Durkeim, we build a framework that holds up in theory and earns its keep in practice. Inside, she explores:Why there is no truth in data, and what that means for biasHow a captured thought becomes usableWhy volume is a poor measure of big dataWhy this is not another wave of Industrial Revolution but something altogether differentWhat data is worth to the people who create itWhat it means that AI, in its current form, is a collection of society's thoughtsMuch of the public fear about AI is aimed at the algorithm. This book turns attention to what is fed into it. That shift opens the conversation beyond coders to philosophers, historians, writers, and anyone whose thoughts now shape the machine.©2026 May Ling Lai (P)2026 May Ling Lai
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