Hiding In Plain Sight

If you know anything about me or read my past articles, you know I love my data. This week was nuts for shipping code (in a good way), and it solidified one of my centermost theses in life:

I think there's a lot of secrets hidden in plain sight, that can tell us a lot about ourselves and the world.

I'll give a plain example:

This is one of my previous articles, and I can empirically observe the texture and depth of my words! This is done through some sophisticated data pipelining and image evaluation (raw physics at work), but it's significant in the fact that I can now objectively measure what the shape of my voice looks like.

This is not unlike the recent research that Meta AI has done - recently, they've introduced a model that can predict responses to stimuli: you give it any visual or sound, it will show how a human brain will likely respond. Their work is obviously orders of magnitude greater in scale than mine, but the point stands.

We may not realize how powerful our own data is. Consider the following:

That last one, Amazon was just granted a patent this week for that: the ability to detect your sleep stage/breathing wirelessly.

I think it’s fair to say: if you know every data point on yourself, you can begin to predict your future. How do you write and think (like my example above)? What wavelength does your body, mind, and spirit take? What people will you hang out with? What habits will you take? What kind of bagels do you like (if any)? Is that extra creamer in your coffee masking a subconscious wiring for extra lipids in your diet, and can I target my new brand of olive oil towards you next time you scroll social media?

Large companies can do this sort of analysis with ease already (i.e. Target being able to predict pregnancy). This relationship is highly asymmetrical, of course, and the average person has no idea how much they are measured without their knowledge or consent.

This doesn't even have to be a big company: you can estimate vitals and human positions through walls. Don't believe me? Check this prototype software out. It uses WiFi signal meshes to triangulate and correlate disturbances to human movement. Releases have existed for a month, WiFi for decades.

The future is, whether we know it or not, based on idiosyncratic data: things we cannot easily Google, things we cannot easily find, but are hiding in plain sight. They are unmodeled, unseen, undiscovered, and chronically ignored: until they become the most important thing in the world. What it requires to uncover this: a keen sense of perception, and a habit of making notes on what you see.

This is why I will urge you: even if you don't have the means to analyze it now, collect your own data somewhere. Journal what you do. What you see outside. Chronicle your life, your voice, your thoughts, and your spirit (however you define it). See what tickles you. Think about what you enjoy, how, and document it. You will find ways of looking at life that nobody else has found before. It may fuel your next invention, a breakthrough in your relationships, self-awareness that has long eluded you, and perhaps an infinitely sobering view on the nature of our world.

Be well,
Michael Kirsanov

P.S. - I was asked this week if I use AI to write my articles/drafts. The actual writing and curation is all me. Even though I use AI in my daily work, the act of writing (to me) is a means of collecting idiosyncratic data: and that means that preserving 100% of my voice DNA is paramount.