Informal Introduction

Informal Introduction

To paraphrase Manuel Azaña,  Prime Minister of the Second Spanish Republic, “If the data punters, grifters and chancers were only allowed to talk about what they really knew about, there would be a great silence. Which would allow us data professionals to actually think about data.” 

This is Martyn Jones—the ever-present and ever-persistent data contrarian. I want to tell you some good stories. And just as I did in one of my previous data-oriented books, Laughing@BigData, I am using this time as a platform to discuss data. And by data, I mean all data: big data, data mesh, data in movement, data at rest, AI and data, data analytics, data sciences, statistics, machine learning and multivariate analysis with data. Data up the wazoo, data down the Khyber Pass, data in the well of wisdom, up the tree of life, and then some more.

And, dear data reader, I will tell my digital tales in somewhat wickedly direct, simple and fundamental ways. Still, I also strive to educate, entertain and inform, and in ways that I hope convey humour, irony, and cynicism, served up with a large smattering of good sense, joie de vivre, and schadenfreude.

At least, that’s the intention.

So, listen up, data domain folks, data and information pros, and decision-supporting tribes. What a storybook I have for you!

A question! What is the world of data, information and knowledge coming to?

Seriously…

I am not a doom and gloom merchant in any significant sense, but, as seen from here, from my refuge in the wilds of Galicia, IT is all over the shop. It’s Dazed and confused. Dazzled and dumbed down and beguiled and side-tracked. In short, IT is being comfortably numb, predictably vague and uncomfortably marginal.

Then there are the negatives.

It is as if (one more time) that up is just down, wrong is dead right and bloody war is the new peace in our time.

Well, surely it cannot all be this good, can it?

Tell you what!

Maybe you have already guessed as much, but in response to my articles, podcasts and blog pieces, I have been labelled angry, annoyed, prickly (well, I think it was that), vindictive, unproductive, problematic, immature, old, cynical, obtuse, cantankerous, and contrarian. In brief, according to some punters, I’m a grumpy piece of work.

Of course, they are generally wrong. Even if my grandmother had approved, I would not spit in the general direction of my hugely mistaken detractors. This reaction engenders bewilderment, amusement, and disbelief nine times out of ten. And what the Spanish call the pity and shame we feel for others.

So, nothing would be further from the truth, my truth. Moreover, I’m far too old to entertain such nonsense. Although, honestly, I do like contrarians, for as obnoxious as they can be. So, if I choose to be what I choose to be, that is my choice and nobody else’s. It’s easy. I am partial to challenging thinkers and contrarians such as Dave Trott, Bob Hoffman, Mel Brooks and Stewart Lee. I hope it shows.

Fortunately, my friends, colleagues and acquaintances keep me strong, committed and challenged. Even if LinkedIn, in their Macrotough totalitarianism and digital thuggery, thought it would be a jolly big wheeze to ban me from their sacred platform for office-space Facebook-ism stupidity, permanently, and all for the heinous crime of insisting on having an opinion that might upset the two extremes of totalitarian Stalinists and psychotic extreme right-wing morons.

So, listen up, pop-pickers, George Orwell was wrong. George Carlin was right. And Dave Trott is bang on the money. This is how the Ministry of Truth works in reality.

But first, let me ask you this. Where would we be without cynicism, sarcasm, irony, satire, parody and the absurd? After all, they have been the essential vehicles, navigators and drivers of some of the most incredible ideas, analyses, contradictions and criticisms in the thinking person’s world.

These things often help us formulate questions that we otherwise wouldn’t be able to answer. Questions such as, in a supposedly idealised data world:

• Would we be well entrenched in data, information and knowledge?
• Can we cope with all of the additional data-babble nonsense?
• Will we end up without a compass, a rudder, sails or a map? Adrift on a muggy sea without waves, the oxygen of sanity or the winds of positive change.
• And will we be embedded in a phoney war on big data, data science, and data smashing?

But many have finally found their calling at the margins of all that! To be the self-proclaimed Princes of Data!

Hold up there! I’m pulling your chain, guys and gals!

Now, here’s a little puzzle for you to play with.

Do you know what a user story is?

Yes? No? Don’t know? Then, let me explain.

A user story is? Let me think, let me think. Let’s not rush into this!

A simple user story could be, “As a whale, I would like free, fair and proportionate access to all the fish stocks in the world”. Or “As the company’s CEO, I would like an up-to-date and detailed view on who is doing what and why they are doing it.” 

And a more elaborate user story may begin as something like the following: “As a regular brainbox on all things data, information and knowledge, I would like to help my friends and allies from sticking their proverbial foot in it and screwing up everything because they didn’t get the data right.” Which is a vast story, an epic epic perhaps, that would need to be broken down into smaller bite-sized stories.

And before we kick off, I have to assert that this is not a “how-to” book. It’s much more than a how-to book; it’s a data, information, and knowledge professional arraigning parts of the profession, including the various shameless chancers, opportunists, and charlatans who pretend to be part of it. It’s a democratic and transversal call to arms for people who still have professional principles and values by which they live, work, and breathe.which they live, work, and breathe.