Data is a footprint and why intentionality matters

In some cases, animals intend to leave something behind for others, like urine marking, in other cases they don’t. Or at least there is not much of a benefit of a deer leaving a trail in the snow unless it has some suicidal tendencies.

Same as animal footprints, data has been left by a person, system or their interactions and it could have been intentional or unintentional.

Why does it matter?

Well, there is an idea that data within organisations have been created intentionally. And I would argue that just because it is somewhere in a structured database within an invoicing system, it doesn’t make it intentional. It makes it less chaotic, yes, but the invoicing system focus is not on describing the process with data, rather it is “What is the minimum data I need to store to fulfil my purpose”.

Sounds like a wordplay, doesn’t it?

Another way how to look at it is to think – If you take data out of the system and with a reasonable knowledge of the process, you can easily simulate what happened.

An animal in heat will intentionally leave a scent mark telling others who will find it that it’s e.g. “young, healthy female ready to mate”. If there is a footprint in snow it should tell others as little as possible and in most cases, it will only tell “I was here and this is where I went”.

The problem nowadays is that we are looking at animal footprints, but we think that those are intentionally left scent marks.