2.1.1 How Tech Changes What We Know Notes

Technology Changes What Counts as Knowledge

1. You probably think you're using technology to access information that already exists but that's not what's actually happening.
2. Let me give you a concrete example.
3. Your grandmother learned to cook by watching. She tasted failed attempts, developing muscle memory.
4. This created a particular type of knowledge, something embodied, intuitive, and learned through repetition and failure.
5. You on the other hand, learn to cook by watching YouTube videos, reading recipe reviews, following step-by-step instructions optimized by thousands of users.

Quantification Changes What We Think We Know

1. Before fitness trackers existed, walking was just moving your body from one place to another.
2. Now walking is data: steps, pace, heart rate, calories burned, route optimization, sleep quality impact.
3. The activity hasn't changed, but what we think we know about walking has been completely transformed.

Prediction Becomes a New Category of Knowledge

1. Instead of just knowing what is, we now have systems that claim to know what will be.
2. Think about it: Netflix doesn't tell you what you like.
3. It tells you what you will like based on algorithmic predictions.
4. This creates an entirely new category of knowledge: probabilistic preference knowledge.
5. The weird thing is that these predictions start shaping your actual preferences.
6. You begin to see yourself through the lens of algorithmic predictions, which changes how you behave, which changes the data, which changes the predictions.

Authority Gets Inverted

1. This is arguably the most radical change technology has created.
2. Traditional knowledge worked like this:
   1. Experts created knowledge then distributed it to non-experts.
   2. Now it works backwards: non-experts create data, algorithms process it, then redistribute it as expertise.

Example

• Google Maps knows traffic patterns better than city planners.
• Not because Google hired better urban experts, but because millions of drivers using smartphones create real-time data that gets algorithmically processed into traffic knowledge.