Externe Column: Peace of Music, or Doomed by Data?

Bob Marley was suspected of choosing political sides and got shot while gangsters of the opposition assaulted his house. The suspicion was based on the announcement of Marley performing at the Smile Jamaica concert, which was organized by the prime minister to stop the gang fights in the country. Even though Marley paid the price of being suspicious by getting shot twice, he refused to blow off his musical performance. After the concert he immediately fled to London, but after about 16 months he returned for the same mission of establishing peace in his home country. And he succeeded: eventually the two prominent political archrivals shook hands in the sake of peace.

This touching example shows how music is able to affect war and peace. Regarding technology and the society (the main concern of our faculty), there are numerous interventions at different levels which are related to love and war.  At the love hand, one can think of dating apps and even sex robots. At the war hand, it is impossible to think of modern warfare without guns, bombs and unmanned battle machines. Technology isn’t bad in itself, but through its applications. And as long as most intentions are right, we could be grateful for technology.

Another field of technology is quite impartial and thus gives little room for any intentions: computational models that predict the future as reliable as possible. But can we still cherish technology if it is predicting war? Several machine learning models indicate a third world war coming. However, predictions of the future are based on past events. And isn’t history meant to be learned from and to prevent making the same mistakes? Are the models taking this into account, or doesn’t our awareness matter anyway? Luckily the interpretation of data and its analysis plays an important role in the practical implementations as well. But even if we can’t explain the underlying mechanism, machine learning has proven to be promising; or in this case worrying.

“My life is only important if I can help plenty people.

If me my life is just me, my one security, then me no want it.

My life is for people. That's what me is.”

This was Bob Marley’s explanatory motivation of returning to the place where he was almost being killed. Let’s (naively) hope World War 3 is an example of a badly executed application of technology, and rely on our easier to understand human emotional capabilities. And if history is indeed about to repeat itself... let it be the rise of a musical messiah instead. 

https://issuu.com/intermania/docs/intermaniaaprilissuu/38