In this month, I would like to write an article not related to Data Science but a serious problem for the society as a whole. As a data science team lead, I am always bringing new blood for the team development. Unfortunately, there are many team members not able to perform reasonably. What’s wrong? They are all well-educated in the top universities around the world.
Google.com Impact
Personally, I think it is related to the Internet with technology giants. When most people are facing problems, they are going to “Google.com” and type some keywords for trying to get answers. Most Internet surfers are just trying to find similar cases to replicate and without any thinking. How do we improve our problem-solving ability with “replicating” from other people experiences? Please stop and think before using your phone and computer with Google.com.
“Instant” Culture
People are always trying to solve their problems instantly – “Quick & Dirty”. They don’t read books and invest their time to study or learn new things. Then, the fundamental skill development might be seriously affected. For instance, some junior data analysts are using regression model to do classification of data. This is totally wrong for trying to fill up data to keep the model running and getting meaningless results.
Fragmenting Your Focus
One of the things that technology introduced us is the myth of multitasking. Well, your brain is not running like the CPU as your computer. No one could really do 2 things at once but he is just doing 1 thing a very period of time and then the other. To take an example, you have 20 tabs running simultaneously in your Chrome browser. Can you read it all? Once you have open a new one, the previous one is being abandoned. This is somehow you are introducing new distraction for the original work.
Blocking to Develop Skills
If you use a smartphone to navigate your locations in your city, you may never learn to read a map or navigate without the aid of a GPS device. Once your phone is running out of battery or out of order, you may not able to do anything – even traveling from one place to another.
Addition Concerns
This may manifest as an addiction to social media, gaming, porn, or any number of other technology (Internet) engagements. Technological addition is an extreme level of the problem because the addicts may check his / her phone for every few minutes.
Digital technology is always making our lives better but it is necessary to understand the cost of dependent on technology. Even I am a data scientist, but I do keep my life to be balance with sports and other activities. As an individual, it is vital to have limits in engaging with technology and relying on your own cognitive capabilities as much as possible. Thus, you should lead a healthier life.
Samuel Sum
Data Science Evangelist (CDS, SDi)
Vice President (AS)