 While the term “reality distortion field” may have been coined about Steve Jobs’s leadership on the development of the Mac, it’s something that has become more and more popular in business. This is of course odd, since we’re talking more and more about data and insights. However, in the face of all that stuff, to just have a POV and cherry pick the data to support that POV is very, very tempting. Compared with actually trying to understand what the data is hinting at for the future. Make no mistake, the data is not the future it is the past. So sometimes we just guess, which is risky business.
The future is where the Oracle of AI (and its hand servant the algorithm) lives to make sense of all that big data history and take that risk out—or so we hope. But how do we factor in the human behavior factor? That crazy variable that has yet to be quantified or built that pays all that data forward into what will happen in the future. The random associations and behavior that are all too human are hard to write into equations about what do. AI at this point other than to incrementally make what sprang from human behavior and invention better, is not about future innovation or inspiration. It’s beautiful optimization but is it insight? That calls for a true and deep understand of what Spock would call the illogical that makes us human. I’m really curious to see how we cross logic with serendipity so that big data can help us navigate the future not just understand the past. Just maybe we caught a glimpse of this future with the “reality distortion field” and the Mac. Data and experience would have said “impossible” but the anomaly of inspiration and fear threw that data out the window and created the personal computer.
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