Background

About a decade ago, as I was ramping up into the world of Big Data, I put together my then understanding into an article that I shared originally on SlideShare site. This is an attempt to bring my posts elsewhere to a common hosted domain. This article here, is a paraphrasing attempt that’d refresh some old memories and a peak into first thoughts and motivation to pursue frameworks to approach opportunities via data-driven methods.

A Digital-Me

It’s a connected world of things and digital-we. Interestingly, a decade after I’ve learnt this new economically progressive thing called a Digital Twin. Back then, including me, we’ve got habituated to using products that are quote free! Probably, a bit of upfront price would have saved our privacy. There are learned systems that know a bit more about me than me. Something that is totally not a subscribed thing, well its sort of when you hit that “I Accept”. You just needed to pull that scroller down -:).

Well, that’s candid in some sense, our data crumbs stayed afloat for a very long time, mostly fragmented and forgotten humanly. Back then I described to myself a need for a fluid peak at my data estate, like a learning dashboard. Here’s a visual conceptualization, that I thought for myself:

While my human cognitive spirits desire for a rest assured safe solution, instead of constant glossing over those scrolls, can I attend to my device when I really need it? It’s a skilling issue about digital wellbeing. Oh, systems do provide a dashboard or two about well beingness. It soon is broken by us drifting away from the self that we are. The more that we double-click into this problem, it leads us in many different directions, mental health to name one from top of my mind.

Thinking about a solution, my thoughts led me to a need for something, an opportunity to briefly though constantly nurture my digital-me. It’d be nice to have some reconciler of sorts to help me address my attention deficit, keeping those costly drifters at bay, and something that can fundamentally allow me to live my purpose of being truly and uniquely human. This is where, an abstract thought of a nimble sorcerer’s lens – gBox is born, with a human in loop, but with a passive sense. Can I go back to my old life of attending to a phone, and be back in my business of life for the most part? Not that I don’t like the connected digital world that we are in today. Technologically it has its charm maintained for years.

Extending the desire

Back then I was conceptualizing this thought with a plausible high-level flow. It was a reference point to nurture underlying learning objectives. Technology has ever since evolved, taking a J-curve in the last few years. While there’s buzz and momentum around, the problem statement to spare me from a 30-degree posture is still valid, even in current times. I still see relevance in the following visual, where it urges to retain uniquely human characteristics, and helps preserves its liveliness:

All I just need a very personalized data steward that adapts to my changing contextual needs, a true digital-me. Something that can help me safely teeter that edge of falsified identity to something that’s saner with a practical disposition.

Technology still can help us point in that direction. Here’s a poor-man’s expression of state of affairs that needs simplification:

insights: f(data) = ∫log(data)context; context = {0, …, ∞}; data = {1 …, ∞}.