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Coco Krumme is an applied mathematician and writer. She got her doctorate at MIT and has spent some time working on data modeling in Silicon Valley, as well as some time living a bit more off the grid, on a remote island in the Pacific Northwest. Through her work, Coco came to question how, and why, we’ve become so obsessed with optimizing nearly every system in our country, and every aspect of our lives. She wrote a book that explores the myriad ways we’ve optimized too many things; what we’ve lost by allowing optimization to become our denomination worldview; and what might be a more compelling and ultimately life-affirming perspective, or priority. That book is aptly titled, Optimal Illusions: The False Promise of Optimization.
Today, we talk about the kind of optimization we’re seeing play out in our culture now. We recorded this conversation in late March, so there was much to discuss on this front.
I also asked Coco about why she thinks the threat of surveillance capitalism is overblown. She shares her thoughts on AI, the hype and money bubble around it, and why she’s more optimistic about what humans can do than what these technologies can do.
MORE FROM COCO KRUMME:
Coco’s Website
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