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An amazing coincidence of articles in today's Times on the use of data, all evidence for my favorite theme of its potential versus its current wastage: 1. On the mushrooming complexity of stock prices, with multiple "values" possible for the same firm at the same time, all of which has nothing to do with real economic processes and everything to do with speculative capital: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/02/business/dealbook/stock-exchange-prices-grow-so-convoluted-even-traders-are-confused-study-finds.html?ref=todayspaper 2. In contrast, an article on the inability of NYC school officials to even track how many kids need special education - a calculation which really should take no more computing power than is in the most primitive cellphone, but is instead frustrated by bureaucratic incompetence and the systemic devaluation of education: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/02/nyregion/thousands-of-new-york-city-students-deprived-of-special-education-services-report-says.html?ref=todayspaper 3. One on the progressive and creative use of a new app by precarious workers' standing up for their rights: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/02/nyregion/new-weapon-in-day-laborers-fight-against-wage-theft-a-smartphone-app.html?ref=todayspaper 4. A related app being abused by a genocidal army (which then engages in murder to make up for its incompetence at using the app): http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/02/world/middleeast/waze-israel-soldiers-west-bank.html?ref=todayspaper The takeaway? I'll resort again to quoting one of my all-time favorite pieces by Lenin on the theme of control and accounting, on who should use data and to what end: "In capitalist society, statistics were entirely a matter for 'government servants', or for narrow specialists; we must carry statistics to the people and make them popular so that the working people themselves may gradually learn to understand and see how long and in what way it is necessary to work, how much time and in what way one may rest, so that *the comparison of the business results* of the various communes may become a matter of general interest and study, and that the most outstanding communes may be rewarded immediately (by reducing the working day, raising remuneration, placing a larger amount of cultural or aesthetic facilities or values at their disposal, etc.)." https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/mar/x03.htm _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
