Click to learn more about author Michael D. Shaw.

To collect data is to collate data: arranging intelligence by exercising intelligence; analyzing intelligence based on experience; applying intelligence in accord with wisdom. No algorithm can do these things well, just as no amount of artificial intelligence (AI) can supplant the wants of people to interact – to speak and correspond – with other people. Whether the topic is health and wellness, or food and nutrition, whether the topic is topical to many or some, data can only reveal where and to whom the topic is relevant. Everything else requires a personal touch, starting with what a person does better than the best machine does to sound natural, saying hello.

Data is technical, yes, but it is not the job of technology to translate a sequence of ones and zeros into a series of well-wrought sentences. Not when the purpose of communication is to start or sustain a conversation. Not when machines can translate commands from people, for people, without engaging people. Not when it is the job of people in business to talk to those people who make doing business possible: consumers.

According to Josh Christensen, Director of Marketing for Genius Gourmet, makers of keto-friendly products:

“Analyzing data starts with respecting what data represents: the interests of individual consumers. Respect establishes a relationship with consumers, while maintaining respect – showing respect – strengthens this relationship. Data allows us to speak to consumers, but respecting data is why consumers choose to listen to what we have to say.”

Christensen is right about respect, that it is a matter of reciprocity. Consumers have a right to be heard, which means businesses have a responsibility to listen before speaking. If Christensen understands this point better than others, or if Genius Gourmet is ingenious in its use of data, so be it. (I do not work for the company, and my research is mine alone, but I commend any company that makes an effort to understand.)

About respect, about the need to show respect by telling people why you respect them, I speak from experience. A career in science teaches me that what is actionable depends on what is knowable; that what is worth knowing depends on what a person in the know knows how to say; that what that person says will determine what people do, or not do, because data does not speak for itself.

Persuasion begins where data ends, for it is a person’s duty to invest the time necessary to present the facts. That the presentation must be intelligible, that the presentation must speak to an audience, marshaling words and images that speak to the interests of an audience, that the presentation must be powerful – these things come down to one thing: respect.

Translating data is a sign of respect. Whether a translation elicits respect, whether a translation inspires people to greet a messenger with respect, never mind how people respond to a message, is the ultimate arbiter of what data can do.

What we must do is translate with care, and show people why they should care too.