education – Sereniti Sparkles

Big Data. What exactly is “BIG” about data? Isn’t data…..Data? You complete a story and save it into a publishing program on your hard drive. That is one file, one collective piece of data, written by you and before network connectivity, for your eyes and whom you’d want to share it with. Each word in that essay is a part of one file.

BIG data, takes each word from that essay, each phrase, location of the file, location where it was written, font choices and colors, and now that picture is worth more than 1000 words.

Big data, takes those thousand words and ties them to one million companies. The one million companies uses every part of every piece of information to predict what you will do next. Every piece of that data predicts what and how you move.

But the system, an intelligent system, is flawed. The data system collects your instincts and assists in the analysis of you as a consumer, citizen, and even…convict.

There is a system called PES, implemented by 33 states judicial systems with similar systems operating in others, that is designed to analyze convict behavior by data collected from their arrests and incidences within the legal system. They say this system can help to better assess risk factors amongst those pre-trial individuals to assist the judges on their decisions toward that individual.

In essence, it is a prisoner tracker that simply takes in data sets of each arrest and stores it in the system to be analyzed and given a rating. In thought and ability, it is a system built to collect and analyze the information. But in actuality it too is imperfect and dangerous.

A system like PES can analyze the data, but what happens when the reasons for that data are from human character flaws that can’t be assessed and factored in. What happens when, a city arrests far higher minor infractions and therefore the data is that that city is far more dangerous. What if the arrests happened at a far higher rate for African Americans, than Caucasian individuals in that city because of racist police officers within the department? What if they were higher because the amount of homeless people on the streets was higher for minorities than whites in another town? Yet, all of these arrests would be part of a snapshot of another citizens right analyzed as a hole but with heavy human character flaws that can’t be recorded and analyzed with this data set. Can you see how the system itself would be dangerous to those within the cities and towns that deal with human to human racism at a high rate? How these data sets would skew the entire understanding of a race. Do you understand that today these systems are using prisoner data to decide on the future of a US citizen? When we are no longer human, we can’t see the world through unskewed eyes.

2020 has brought clarity to everything around us. It has exposed our greatest fears and highlighted our greatest love. It has brought us to our knees with humility. Through the Pandemic, the Economic Downfall, and Civil unrest, we have been given our most important opportunity.

It is our time to teach the future generations the most vital lessons of today. We can wait no longer to be conscious of what humanity has the power to do, both for good and evil. If we do not teach them what these lessons are, there may not be a bright future.

So let’s begin,

Covid-19 came in like a tornado and has wiped over 100,000 Americans from the face of the earth. It has caused many to lose the people they cherish most in an instant. The ripple effect of all of those deaths has caused us to understand that everyone’s life can inadvertently cause someone’s death. We are humbled. Take care of you, take care of your neighbor, life depends on it.

The Economic downfall has caused people to lose their homes, their savings, and their stability. Like an earthquake, it all started to crack. The floor beneath us started to fall out. Work hard and save because you don’t know if tomorrow will be a day the floor is no longer there.

And finally, the Civil unrest. This is what happens to a nation of people who have been silenced for too long. Complacency can be the enemy if you allow it to live within you. Accepting the mistreatment of others can also kill. Without saying a word, you can take part in allowing a system to harm the people it represents. More than ever, in 2020, we understand that we have to speak up, our lives depend on it.

As we smile around the world through our selfies and group photos, we are missing our sparkle. We are losing our light as hopelessness grows within all of us. Teach them that strength and respect for one another can save us. Teach them to walk back into the light we once knew. Teach them so that the smiles of the future will never be so grim. Teach them…