Hidden Figures
When the Hubble telescope was launched in 1990 we knew it would provide the clearest images ever of galaxies far far away. It would gather photons on an 8 foot mirror which was the most uniformly polished surface ever achieved at that scale. The photons were then focused on a secondary mirror which sent them to Hubble’s detectors. If we made a list of what images Hubble might capture it would likely include galaxies, stars, comets, nebulae, and all manner of heavenly bodies. So long as an object emitted or reflected photons that could reach our lonely corner in sufficient quantity, it could be imaged. We thought of Hubble in terms of what it could see.
Fast forward a decade and ambitious astronomers were devising ways to find exoplanets orbiting sun-like stars. Exoplanets are planets that are not in our solar system. The only problem is the nearest systems likely to have such masses are too far to be detected. The tiny amount of light they reflect is quickly lost in the noise of a vast universe. Our astronomers were undeterred and turned to a data set generated by Hubble over 9 years. Instead of asking what Hubble was seeing, they asked what it wasn’t seeing. They hypothesized that a properly oriented exoplanet, when passing between its star and Hubble, would cause a temporary reduction in the amount of light being detected. Machine learning algorithms were able to resolve these incredibly subtle dips which are evidence of exoplanets orbiting sun-like stars. It was named the Transit Method. This valuable proof which we were constantly devising ways to collect was already in our hands.
On June 9, 1984, the body of 17 year old Melanie Road was found in a pool of blood not far from her home in Bath, UK. She was walking home from a bar after spending the evening with friends and was savagely raped and stabbed. It was a shocking and inexplicable crime and no one could imagine who could have perpetrated such a heinous act. Police investigated and gathered evidence among which was Melanie’s clothes. Body fluids were recovered but the technology of the day yielded only general conclusions. Time ticked by with no suspect, no closure. A few years later when DNA testing became widely available the police wisely submitted the evidence for testing and the resulting profile then waited patiently to be matched. Three long decades later the daughter of the unknown assailant was arrested and provided a DNA sample in her own case. Police added this profile to their database and a partial match was returned. This was in fact the daughter of the man who had raped and murdered Melanie Road. He was arrested and ultimately pleaded guilty. He had no concept all those years ago just how much information could and would be extracted from the evidence he left behind.
There is a great quote that is often falsely attributed to Henry Ford, inventor of the Model T that makes an interesting thought experiment.
“If I asked people what they wanted they would have said faster horses.”
This idea that our foresight is limited to the degree that we’re not so great at conceiving of paradigm shifting technologies is somewhat insulting. Then again we can’t all invent the iphone.
There’s more to the self evident nature of the quote though. Faster horses are a snuggly version of the future because they would be a future we know nearly everything about. To go beyond is to wade deeper into the uncertainty we spend our lives trying to avoid.
Now though is not the time to avoid and while I’m a fan of comfort there’s a matter requiring urgent attention. We must push beyond our nature, and beyond faster horses. It’s not the futures we see but the ones we can’t which should serve as the ultimate motivator for action.
Our digital breadcrumbs are gobbled up free of charge by every manner of business and government providing them extraordinary value, capability and advantages. It’s public record the variety of ways the American public has been influenced, not always willingly or knowingly, to large degrees and small using this information. Being simple creatures we have only an inkling of the power we have let slip away. It is an uncomfortable truth and a frightening thing to consider. Even more so to ponder how this relationship will evolve. Here we have ability and tools to retake ownership of the data we generate, only lacking the will. I think this is only because we haven’t fully imagined the future.
Time is of the essence. Each day we fail to solve this problem is another day of our data no longer in our custody. We can’t conceive of just how much information, what hidden patterns, what clues to our souls are locked away in this data. That is until the next A.I., social network, or government finds them, then leverages them in ways equally beyond our grasp.
