The Datanaut

Never have data been accessible in such quantities to so many people. Any middle- class citizen can, in the comfort of his own study, with a few movements of his fingers bring to his eyes the entire 2000 U.S. Census, or the price of every stock on all the world’s bourses, or the past and future positions of all the planets and their moons. He can then inspect those numbers for as long as he wishes. That will not usually be very long. Even for the professional demographer, or stockbroker, or astronomer, the pleasures of browsing data on that scale soon pall. Our citizen soon finds himself like a ship’s passenger looking out across the ocean on a calm day. With a maximum of concentration he might notice a line of whitecaps here, a change of sea color there; but the sheer quantity of near-featureless water soon wearies his attention, and he turns with relief to the variety offered by his book, his game, his companions.

To the master mariner, of course, the ocean is anything but featureless. It is a cathedral of complexity—of shoals and deeps, rocks and reefs, tides and currents. Those whitecaps, that color change, for him are freighted with meaning. They are signs, markers. Any particular sign might be ambiguous; but taken together, and weighed with the judgment attained through long experience, they reveal deep truths, and guide his ship safely to harbor.

About the Author

John Derbyshire

Mr. Derbyshire is a former contributing editor of National Review.

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Never have data been accessible in such quantities to so many people. Any middle- class citizen can, in the comfort of his own study, with a few movements of his fingers bring to his eyes the entire 2000 U.S. Census, or the price of every stock on all the world’s bourses, or the past and future positions of all the planets and their moons. He can then inspect those numbers for as long as he wishes. That will not usually be very long. Even for the professional demographer, or stockbroker, or astronomer, the pleasures of browsing data on that scale soon pall. Our citizen soon finds himself like a ship’s passenger looking out across the ocean on a calm day. With a maximum of concentration he might notice a line of whitecaps here, a change of sea color there; but the sheer quantity of near-featureless water soon wearies his attention, and he turns with relief to the variety offered by his book, his game, his companions.

To the master mariner, of course, the ocean is anything but featureless. It is a cathedral of complexity—of shoals and deeps, rocks and reefs, tides and currents. Those whitecaps, that color change, for him are freighted with meaning. They are signs, markers. Any particular sign might be ambiguous; but taken together, and weighed with the judgment attained through long experience, they reveal deep truths, and guide his ship safely to harbor.