6. Moneyball: Another Promise of Digital Humanities?

An idea not completely of his own, since it relied on theoretical assumptions from Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity (1841), Marx in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844) projects the idea of “entfremdung” towards the creative relation of the worker with his productive labor. The whole explanation and description of the capitalist mode of production is threefold: (a) Alienation of the worker from the product of his work; (b) Alienation of the worker from the act of producing; and (c) Alienation of the worker from himself (this in turns, Marx defines as his genre species or Gattungswesen. This in turn, is in itself completely revolutionary since the capitalist mode of production alters all former “traditional” modes of production.

This giant is mentioned in a number of plays from the fifth century BC, notably the Suppliants, Prometeus Bound by Aeschylus and the Phoenician Women by Euripides. The roman poet Ovid also mentions this particular figure in his Metamorphosis. This Panoptes is later slain by the god Hermes and his eyes, send by the goddess Hera to the feathers in a Peacock’s tail. The teaching may be that observation can be defeated or improved by accurate communication and the whole hermeneutic process of any empirical phenomena recorded.

See Chap. 7: The Labor-Process and the Process of Producing Surplus-Value in any translation of Das Kapital (2009) Anaconda Verlag Köln (nach der Ausgabe Berlin, Gustav Kiepenhauer Verlag, 1932), also in English: Capital A Critique of Political Economy, 2004, Penguin.

This and the so called 14 production principles can be found in his work “Administration industrielle et générale—prévoyance organisation—commandement, coordination—contrôle” (Industrial and General Administration) 1930. Translated by J.A. Coubrough, London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons.

See Chap. 7: The Labor-Process and the Process of Producing Surplus-Value in any translation of Das Kapital (2009) Anaconda Verlag Köln (nach der Ausgabe Berlin, Gustav Kiepenhauer Verlag, 1932), also in English: Capital A Critique of Political Economy, 2004, Penguin.

This and the so called 14 production principles can be found in his work “Administration industrielle et générale—prévoyance organisation—commandement, coordination—contrôle” (Industrial and General Administration) 1930.Translated by J.A. Coubrough, London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons.

Egon Zehnder (2014, p. 4) elaborates on the matter to produce what he calls the “Six Guiding Principles” for leaders to operate with Big Data, namely:

All six points assume that data has been gathered and that the most difficult point is to know how to make use of it. Data has therefore to be translated, and should be focused under several perspectives since in itself it is both neutral and meaningless.

I suggest Chap. 4 in Silver (2012) where he explains a case of excellent profit from big data use: the weather forecasting industry.

For more information I would recommend N. Negroponte’s book “Being Digital” (1996) most particularly the chapter dedicated to the DNA of Information.

Closer to the possibilities of a “biopolitical” design in daily life, Big Data platforms are now able to synthesize unstructured data and applications from the fields of Sociology, Psychology, Political Sciences etc. Due to the unprecedented power in working with almost unimaginable amounts of information at very fast speed, this is becoming possible even in fields formerly thought distant from statistical models such as Social Networks or how individuals connect, influence, and are influenced by a network of friends, peers and acquaintances. Please see Behavioral Economics: why rational choice theory may not answer some of the world’s pressing economic problem and Language and Semantics: combination of computer science, mathematics and linguistics, Accessed on 27 April 2015, URL: http://​www.​xaxis.​com/​es/​blog/​view/​a-deep-dive-into-big-data-intelligence#sthash.​MlEkxh5h.​V8nAolR6.​dpuf.

It is not the purpose of this chapter to elaborate too much on probabilistic but the reader should be reminded that Bayesian analysis is on theoretical terms, the only possible refutation (if flawed) to the induction problem presented by Hume. In his paper “An Essay toward solving a problem in the doctrine of chances” (1763). Bayes is probably the first thinker to correlate probability as a rational factor, considering the mathematical condition that the more any phenomena occurs, under certain regular conditions, the more it is likely to occur (the curve never reaches 100 % possibility anyway). This is antithesis to the Humean approach which demonstrates the inability to rationally and logically predict the future from a sequence formed in the past. Big Data, and the chances to deepen our correlation of variables almost to unhuman levels, nears the percentage to which reality could be predicted and in turn, manipulated.

Arendt does not use this word. She calls the new working force brought by Robert McNamara to write the report, the “problems solvers”. However, the idea of technocracy is implicit in their actions and world view as described by Arendt. Also, the fact that someone coming from the private industry such as McNamara would consider these working profiles, may be consistent with a mensurable and product oriented vision of the world. Etymologically the word is a neologism from two ancient Greek words Techné + Kratos, the former being the practical use or application of scientific knowledge and the later the force or power derived from it.

Arendt summarizes her fear of this possible future as follows: “Men who act to the extent that they feel themselves to be the masters of their own future, will forever be tempted to make themselves masters of the past too” (Arendt 1972, p. 12). In a different order of ideas, the people Orwell envisioned as re-writing history to satisfy the will of big brother, could today be resumed in one who, with enough data command, could reshape our whole idea of the past with basically one click. Though exaggerated, this is theoretically possible.

In a report not about Big Data as a Myth but about the myths people tend to develop towards Big Data, the Greenbiz Group directly says “No matter how ‘big’” an incomplete or otherwise flawed set of data cannot provide actionable information. “The proper analytics can be developed only with a clear understanding of the quality and quantity of available data” (Davies 2014, p. 3). In this case, the “understanding comes from “giving sense to Data, which is to apply a methodology in order to get a result”. Again, Kolakowski’s observation of our need to create patterns where there are none, is present”.

The Sabermetrics Manifesto by David Grabiner (Accessed on 27 April 2015, URL: http://​seanlahman.​com/​baseball-archive/​sabermetrics/​sabermetric-manifesto/​).

For Baseball statistics see: http://​mlb.​mlb.​com/​stats/​sortable.​jsp#elem=​%5Bobject+Object%5D&​tab_​level=​child&​click_​text=​Sortable+Player+​hitting&​game_​type=​'R'&​season=​2014&​season_​type=​ANY&​league_​code=​'MLB'&​sectionType=​sp&​statType=​hitting&​page=​1&​ts=​1420391944673, accessed on 27 April 2015.

Spiegel Online. Accessed on 27 April 2015, URL: http://​www.​spiegel.​de/​international/​business/​big-data-enables-companies-and-researchers-to-look-into-the-future-a-899964.​html.