[Hidden-tech] a question for HT futurists

[Videatives at aol.com]

Amy,.

Love this challenge.   I am not sure my idea translates easily into a job 
description, but the day is coming when numbers will be replaced by narratives.   
This becomes possible as we develop robust ways to search video content. 
Numbers have to count things that repeat, elsewise one would never get beyond the 
number "one" in a scientific report.    To know that something has repeated 
one has to create a standard definition so that two people can agree, "yes, 
there it is again."   These standardized units, while countable, are devoid of 
meaning because they have no story unto themselves, no narrative if you will.   
We, the YouTube generation, are becoming less convinced of the authenticity of 
numbers.   More and more people will be developing methods to make judgments 
based on huge video databases to satisfy our awakening to the sterility of 
numbers and the need for the uniqueness of narrative.   

For example, in the future the evaluation of two school programs for young 
children need not be based on the number of skills the children exhibit on 
tests.   Rather the evaluation can be based on the quality of the story that 
represents each of the schools.   The new video-search software will generate a 
meta-pattern of each school's story.   This now allows for two schools to have 
rather different stories, but both could be judged high quality because now one 
can "read" the story and understand the school in its own context.   With 
numbers the context is lost and we falsely conclude, at times, that the school with 
the higher score is a higher quality school.   

Currently we have no recourse because decision-makers depend on the 
"objectivity" of numbers.   Nor can decision-makers take the time to visit each school 
for weeks.   They have no robust method of finding the school's story.   They 
do have what we call anecdotes but dismiss them as shallow samplings of the 
data.   But as technology learns to automate pattern analysis from huge text and 
video databases, programs such as schools, corporate teams, NGO projects, 
etc. can be understood instead of simply evaluated.   A dysfunctional system can 
be recognized by it processes.   The numerical count of its products could be 
superfluous at the best, misleading at the worst.   No longer will be 
satisfied with the pragmatist's answer "But it works."   We want to understand how the 
system generates its products, what process (narrative, culture, system) 
represents the school best.   We want to "see" the school, even if we are looking 
at abstract representations of their story, the pattern.

Lets call this new job - video pattern analyst.   I emphasize video because 
it is the most sequenced, contextualized and nuanced media we have to date. 
These affordances of video are essential in preserving the temporal flow of each 
micro-narrative as one attempts to generate the meta-narrative.   Counting 
countables across time suffers from the process of unitization that I mentioned 
before.   Once you reduce something to a unit, you necessarily decontextualize 
that unit and can in no legitimate way put humpty dumpty together again.     
Video analyze will be huge in 2020.   Now isn't 2020 the perfect date to see 
things more clearly.


Ciao,
George Forman
President, Videatives, Inc.
Amherst, MA 
www.vdieatives.com
See What Children Know™



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