This involves, first, understanding powers of ten; second, visualizing data over a wide range of magnitudes on graphs using logarithmic scales; and third, appreciating the meaning of magnitude scales, such as the decibel (dB) scale for the loudness of sounds and the Richter scale for the strength of earthquakes.

The person who has access to his unconscious processes and mines them without getting mired in them can try new approaches, can begin to see things in new ways, and, perhaps, can achieve mastery of his pursuits.

It is a way of thinking, the best approach yet devised (if still an imperfect one) for discovering progressively better approximations of how things really are.

There are multiple stakeholders, who don’t define the problem the same way. If the number of uninsured goes down but costs go up, is that progress? We don’t even know.

Focusing on short-term, incremental solutions will only distract us from working on producing the home runs that could change the assumptions regarding energy and society’s resources.

Having been fed personal data provided by users themselves or gathered by third parties, the technology would then analyze it to “enable identification of opportunities and/or provisioning of recommendations to increase user productivity and/or improve quality of life.”

For that, we must look for and invest in quantum jumps in technology with low probability of success; we must create black-swan technologies. We must enable the multiplication of resources

Kevin Kelly’s quantified self and Gary Wolf’s data-driven life. With its mobile sensors and apps

We need to think more about mining our own output to extract patterns that turn our raw personal data stream into predictive, actionable information.