I really start to believe, that I somehow have to explain my thoughts on the Pirate movement more in detail than I do that regularly (if not as often as I would like) on Twitter. This is another post in the “Pirates and …” series which illustrates my point of view on core pirate issues without saying that I’m right, it should only give indication on how I feel about certain topics.
When Pirates see a new project for a compulsory database, it is like watching a herd of monkeys seeing someone throwing bananas at them, they go wild. The first reflex of many Pirates about compulsory databases is to deny them every right to exist and thus they oppose them from the very beginning with all their weight. I believe that it is a bad reflex to see every database as evil, but I do also believe, that many are 
Please let me explain my train of thought here which is somehow more difficult to follow if I understand some reactions correctly. I do oppose centralized databases with compulsory data gathering where the use for the person, which’s data is stored is not clear. I even do oppose them strictly and with all vehemency you can imagine, but I see other databases as useful. When do I see a database as useful? A database can be useful if it is decentralized and stored in a strictly defined environment. Much like old file registers where you would store your files in. Databases which are not interconnected and store such data digitally (which makes the analog copies obsolete) have the adavantage that data is much more easily digestable and can be merged and analyzed in order to gain new insights. Which is important is that such data is subject to the same restrictions than the earlier files were. I do not want to see large centralized datastores where the use for the individual is doubtful when a small LibreOffice Calc sheet would do it.
So in the short, I often have the same reflex than most other pirates that I oppose databases per se, but I can be convinced of their usefulness in the case where such databases are strictly decentralized and every attempt to centralize or interconnect them is fervently opposed. We cannot build the future with tools from yesterday so we have to ensure that the tools of tomorrow conform to our expectations.
2 comments
Jerry says:
Aug 26, 2011
I think you miss the point here. You discuss about databases as if they exist just for the sake of existing. Databases are filled with data, that is the problem, not the existence of databases. So the question is not how or where we save but should we save at all. And, in my opinion, statistics and large databases are way overrated.
In education f.ex. all I hear from my friends that are teachers is that no one ever asks they about their work, about what they would change about their view on problems. Instead we create a big fat database, see that 45,50258% of children speak language xyz at home and think we found the problem.
I don’t want to deny that statistics and databases can be useful. But I say that they are way overrated, contribute to the problems by making people think they’re solving a problem when they’re not and pose a very serious threat to civil liberties.
svnee says:
Aug 26, 2011
I will follow-up on this a little bit more elaborated comment, but be aware, you may not like what you hear
I did choose to not write about when you should have databases and how they can support problem-identification and -solving. This would require far more detail and my post should more or less make clear that databases per se are not evil. That they are not always the solution is evident, but they may support findings via statistical evaluations.
I believe that we both have a very different view on databases. My point is that databases are not evil, and I do not even talk about education
That the current law proposal is nonsense and even very dangerous is out of question and that you should talk to the teachers instead of relying on aggregated data is more than clear. You don’t have to drink unicorn blood in order to understand that.
Every database which is interconnected is dangerous, but not every database is interconnected and when you are able to eliminate paper and get a shiny new database you should take that opportunity, but you should always ensure that the database is decentralized!