Archaeologists Embrace Big Data

Announcer (00:07):

Welcome to TARTLE Cast with your hosts, Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby, where humanity steps into the future and source data defines the path.

Alexander McCaig (00:24):

Jason, whoever made us the host of this show? That was a mistake.

Jason Rigby (00:28):

Yeah, I think we kind of de-centralized it and gave it to ourselves.

Alexander McCaig (00:32):

We're taking the power back.

Jason Rigby (00:34):

Yes, exactly.

Alexander McCaig (00:35):

I'm not going to any sort of board member to ask who's going to be on the podcast.

Jason Rigby (00:38):

No, exactly.

Alexander McCaig (00:39):

We're going to do it.

Jason Rigby (00:40):

Yeah. That's what Joe Rogan said when he signed up for Spotify and got hundreds of millions of dollars, whatever, the number keeps growing, how much he got actually. But that was his only thing is like, "I have absolute-"

Alexander McCaig (00:51):

Autonomy?

Jason Rigby (00:51):

"100% power over the show. Whatever guests I want to bring on, I can bring on. Whatever I want to do, I can do. You cannot ever tell me I can't do this."

Alexander McCaig (01:03):

Wow.

Jason Rigby (01:04):

And then they're like, "Sure." And then they signed it.

Alexander McCaig (01:06):

"Sounds good to us. We're just worried about our margins."

Jason Rigby (01:08):

Well, I mean, their stock went up like three or four times, so that's crazy. So think of the billions and billions of dollars. So they did an investment of a hundred and something million and made billions.

Alexander McCaig (01:17):

Oh yeah. Yeah fine.

Jason Rigby (01:18):

I'll take the heat all day long.

Alexander McCaig (01:20):

Yeah, go ahead.

Alexander McCaig (01:22):

Dr. Jones.

Jason Rigby (01:23):

Yes.

Alexander McCaig (01:24):

Dr. Jones.

Jason Rigby (01:27):

Indiana. It's amazing. What's his name? How many planes has he crashed?

Alexander McCaig (01:30):

Legitimately, is he a pilot?

Jason Rigby (01:32):

Yeah.

Alexander McCaig (01:33):

Harrison Ford.

Jason Rigby (01:35):

Harrison Ford. Dude, there's pictures. You should see how many planes he's crashed and he's still alive.

Alexander McCaig (01:41):

Has the FAA not been like, "Mr. Ford, really"-

Jason Rigby (01:45):

[crosstalk 00:01:45] private plane is just laying on the ground.

Alexander McCaig (01:47):

Really?

Jason Rigby (01:47):

Yeah, he had one that was really bad.

Alexander McCaig (01:49):

I didn't know this.

Jason Rigby (01:50):

Yeah, you have to look it up.

Alexander McCaig (01:53):

Listen, I like flying.

Jason Rigby (01:54):

Well, I think when he was younger, he was doing that racing.

Alexander McCaig (01:59):

Oh, he used to race airplanes?

Jason Rigby (02:00):

Yeah, that's pretty sketchy. So if you're being aggressive.

Alexander McCaig (02:04):

Like those Red Bull guys?

Jason Rigby (02:05):

Yeah.

Alexander McCaig (02:05):

I love flying.

Jason Rigby (02:06):

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Alexander McCaig (02:07):

I like the casual aspect of it. What I want to be in like a MiG or something and just absolutely punch it to like 45,000 feet, maybe 50, just like full throttle [crosstalk 00:02:17] sound barrier-

Jason Rigby (02:16):

Does it make me pass out?

Alexander McCaig (02:18):

Yeah, I would. But for the majority of my time, I like to take it slow and easy. I like to ride the Cadillac of the skies, you know?

Jason Rigby (02:23):

Yes, exactly. Yeah.

Alexander McCaig (02:24):

Good old, the happy little fixed-wing Cessna sitting down there on [inaudible 00:02:27].

Jason Rigby (02:27):

What's that golfer that died in the plane which just everybody had died in the plane? This was in the 90s and the plane was just flying on autopilot for hours. They had to wait for it to... I think it was decompression or something, but they had to wait for the plane to run out of gas.

Alexander McCaig (02:46):

Interesting.

Jason Rigby (02:46):

Yeah. And then it finally crashed, but it was like no response, no nothing and everybody was dead on board.

Alexander McCaig (02:53):

It's so strange.

Jason Rigby (02:54):

It was just flying. Isn't that weird?

Alexander McCaig (02:55):

Yeah.

Jason Rigby (02:57):

It reminds me of, and I've mentioned this before the Matrix movies because I love them so much because I think it shows a lot to what our reality is. But we're there in the elevator and they got all the weapons and stuff-

Alexander McCaig (03:08):

Great scene.

Jason Rigby (03:10):

... and they're just sitting there and there's like elevator music going.

Alexander McCaig (03:12):

Yeah, great scenes.

Jason Rigby (03:13):

And then the doors open and then it's just pure chaos.

Alexander McCaig (03:15):

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jason Rigby (03:15):

But in that brief moment, there was this really quiet. I was meditating this morning and my brain was just like... I mean, just like-

Alexander McCaig (03:25):

Thought after thought, after thought.

Jason Rigby (03:27):

Thought after thought, after thought and I was like, "Okay, I'm going to calm down. I need to relax." And so I'm relaxing trying to... And then I got like in this real peaceful moment and I thought it was a long time. And I looked, because I was like proud of myself, ego was like, "Great job, Jason."

Alexander McCaig (03:46):

Good job, Jason, [crosstalk 00:03:46].

Jason Rigby (03:47):

Six minutes and 40 seconds.

Alexander McCaig (03:51):

Listen, it's amazing how still a moment could feel for a long time in meditation.

Jason Rigby (03:54):

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Alexander McCaig (03:55):

But maybe that's what they were doing in the airplane on autopilot. They were meditating.

Jason Rigby (04:02):

Yeah.

Alexander McCaig (04:02):

Transcended.

Jason Rigby (04:03):

Well, it's a form of meditation if we want to get into...

Alexander McCaig (04:07):

Don't start. [crosstalk 00:04:07].

Jason Rigby (04:09):

Dude, I'd beat you so bad.

Alexander McCaig (04:10):

Please [crosstalk 00:04:11].

Jason Rigby (04:12):

You guys notice this, if you've been listening to us for a while, I'm just as like a secret quiet guy, just hanging out over here, asking questions and then occasionally I'm like, "I'm going to try this on him." It's a risk assessment always with you and me isn't it?

Alexander McCaig (04:25):

I'm always thinking about what's the risk on this? Do you know the State Farm Commercial, I got you a dollar?

Jason Rigby (04:30):

Yeah.

Alexander McCaig (04:30):

That's what you're doing to me every time. I'm like, "Yeah, give me that."

Jason Rigby (04:33):

Yeah, exactly.

Alexander McCaig (04:35):

But when you're in a plane, what do you get in a plane? What do they call that view? Bird's eye view.

Jason Rigby (04:39):

Yeah, bird's eye view. Yeah.

Alexander McCaig (04:41):

When you fly across the United States, you're like, "Oh, now I can see how the Rockies kind of go up this point. I can see all the land changes. I can actually see patterns from above. There's a lot of interesting things happen when I'm up here." And so archeology that's moving towards that more data-driven process not necessarily them being in a plane and taking hard photographs, but-

Jason Rigby (05:04):

Having drones with infrared.

Alexander McCaig (05:06):

Drones, infrared, they use ground penetrating radar. They're using satellite imagery. Now when you have this bird's eye view, the whole idea here about this article that we're going to get into is that you have more to test against.

Jason Rigby (05:22):

Yeah and the Journal of Field Archeology devoted entirely issue to discussing the myriad ways of which large-scale datasets and associated analytics are transforming the field.

Alexander McCaig (05:31):

And it is transforming the field because rather than us just looking at this as archeologists and we're like, "Oh my gosh, we didn't realize there was another part over here, a part over here," you can see the patterns of these small societies or civilizations. You can now look at it from a greater more macro view so that when you come down with the micro view with your picks and your brushes to move away the dirt and everything, now, you're like, "Oh, now I can see the interaction in the interplay." Now I can guide myself to be like, "We need to be digging over here," rather than just saying, "Oh, we dug here. Oh look, it seems to be expanding. Let's look at the whole picture and then come to some sort of consensus with it." Now we can test against a larger model.

Jason Rigby (06:11):

Yeah. The National Museum of Ethnology in Japan, they developed two online databases and used them to bring a fresh perspective to the forced resettlement of the Inca Empire in the 1570s by the Spanish conquerors.

Alexander McCaig (06:23):

Yeah. So this was really cool. The Inca Empire had been around for a while. So when the Spanish came in, they're like, "Man, this is a huge amount of territory." First of all, how did the Incas manage this territory? And beyond the management, how did they move themselves? Like how did they even come to some sort of consensus of, "This is where we should develop this little civilization, this one here and this one here?" And what they found by taking these bird's eye views with these databases and stitching it all together is that the Spanish mirrored the same exact paths. So they're like, "If we need to manage this civilization, like the Incas have being managing and if we're going to take it over, we need to use whatever their system was."

Jason Rigby (07:03):

What's funny is we did this here in the United States is they use roads and then those populations were around the roads what they found.

Alexander McCaig (07:08):

Yeah. And when you have the bird's eye view, you can analyze all those roads. You can understand, "Well, the Spanish just used what was already there as an infrastructure."

Jason Rigby (07:16):

Yeah but here is this ego rub of traditional field work paired to these tools of big data. And I know they're not throwing in the trial. The article said that, I can't take credit for it.

Alexander McCaig (07:29):

It kills you, yeah.

Jason Rigby (07:30):

I loved that.

Alexander McCaig (07:31):

It kills you though.

Jason Rigby (07:31):

But they were discussing how there's got to be a balance between the two approaches and there's some drawbacks to tapping into the power of scale. And then there's this really old school... Archeology is really old school.

Alexander McCaig (07:45):

Everybody wants to be Indiana Jones.

Jason Rigby (07:48):

No wants to have, it's like, no, the trials are best tool not the computer.

Alexander McCaig (07:52):

Yeah, this is time tested.

Jason Rigby (07:53):

Yes.

Alexander McCaig (07:54):

Yeah I'm glad it's time tested, but now here's a new tool to help elevate your work. It's not here to replace it. It's like when human labor wigs out when they start seeing like robots going into warehouses, that's honestly the proper thing that should be happening. But if you think about it just, I don't want to get...

Alexander McCaig (08:11):

So for an archeologist, it's like, well, how do I stop being such a Luddite and start to accept this technology and say, "This can actually advance my research more so than I thought before"? And I'll give an interesting insight on this. George Mallory was, I forget the gentleman he climbed with. He's one of the first dudes to climb Everest.

Jason Rigby (08:29):

Right.

Alexander McCaig (08:30):

No one was ever sure if he made it to the top, but they did find his dead body there. He like snapped his femur in half, or what have you and froze to death, typical Everest. But there was someone down below, like the Sherpa's looking up observing him and he has to go up and do that observation of him physically being there in some sort of dangerous setting or scenario. And after that, the people that were in search of George Malory's body, there were some individuals that had studied the Everest deeply and they took a bunch of aerial photos and then they stitched all these things together to create some sort of map.

Alexander McCaig (09:06):

And then with that map, they took their microcosm of information for what was recorded from the people in George Mallory's presence. And then they took the greater map, this more forward technology and brought both of them together to say, "This is probably where his body is." So then it led those researchers to go out on Everest and be like, "Let's search this area and so when you do take out your trowel and everything else, you're digging in the right spot."

Jason Rigby (09:32):

Yeah, and archeology just as it says generally think of field collected data as the gold standard. And then they say we tend to think of people as the main instrument of observation so as an archeologist. So it's the field data that they're receiving from people and then people are interpreting that information.

Alexander McCaig (09:50):

So every time a person interprets something there's bias.

Jason Rigby (09:52):

Right.

Alexander McCaig (09:53):

Every time. Everybody has their own perspective, any sort of emotional stance when they recover an object. The satellite taking the imagery or the UAV drone was built by a human being. It's just an eyeball that doesn't have a belief system. It's an eyeball that is strictly observing. It has no emotional stance on what it's observing. It just is doing what it's doing. So it's not that what's going on with the drone is any different from how a person looks at something, it's just that how the person then interprets it. The drone just says, "Here you go. Here's the data."

Jason Rigby (10:24):

Yeah and I liked how the article brought in climate change because that's one of the big issues at TARTLE that we're trying to help humanity with.

Alexander McCaig (10:32):

It's one of the major issues, it's actually the top issue.

Jason Rigby (10:34):

But it gives specifics, it just doesn't throw this political, all climate change. Some of that is driven by climate change. In Peru, we see this very concretely through intensifying El Nino events, which triggers all kinds of flooding on the North Coast of Peru and it's been destroying sites.

Alexander McCaig (10:49):

It does, it destroys sites. And there's other places within the jungle canopy that you can't see through and you're required to use penetrating satellites to go through that jungle canopy where you send radar and you can actually bounce through that crop whatever it might be and see what's underneath it. And when you look at climate change, if you start like burning these forests down like rainforest, well, what if something was built in that rainforest? What if there was some lost Amazonian tribe and we just torched the entire thing, we didn't know it because they had thatched roof shacks?

Alexander McCaig (11:17):

Me as the cattle farming guy on the outside is just like, "Hey, whatever, man, it burnt like any other old tree," but it's important that we look at what we're doing and how those effects are actually systemic and they can affect archeology. It can actually destroy our history. Climate change is interesting. If we're worried about looking at our past so we don't repeat the same mistakes let's not make a stupid mistake now that's just going to wipe our past out altogether.

Jason Rigby (11:40):

Yeah, and that's something that we're looking at more and more, especially when you see things. And that's what disturbs me right now is when we're trying to erase history. In lots of different ways and may not even realize it. It's like I always want, when I go to Germany, I always want to see the concentration camps. I would hate for them to bulldoze them down and they just disappear. They have to be there. You have to be able to walk into these gas chambers and realize how horrific humans can be if we don't have moral and ethics.

Alexander McCaig (12:10):

Yeah, if we cannot take a logical line of cause and effect into our past, look at it and analyze it properly like any good data scientists would do, how are we supposed to know we're taking the right path into the future. You got to analyze those cause and effects. And if you're talking about the biggest eraser of human history, that is climate change that negatively impacts us. At that point, you're not worried about the history, you're worried about you because it's just going to wipe all you out and then there's no history that can be recorded at that point.

Jason Rigby (12:39):

Yeah. There is one of the archeologist who was talking about, when he was talking about photo archives and I love this. He would say, he said, "90% of what I've done has been survey and excavation in the field. I've worked in the same valley in the Andes for 25 years." So this guy's an expert.

Alexander McCaig (12:53):

I'm a little jealous.

Jason Rigby (12:55):

Well he said that's not unusual. People will pick sites and then work them years and years. "Archeologists tend to specialize geographically and they tend to get to know a place intimately. I'm a big advocate for that. We're hyper-conscious of the fact this is kind of a God-like view you get from viewing the surface of the earth from everywhere and nowhere at once. Brings with it a lot of risk." He's talking about looking at satellite imaging and stuff like that.

Alexander McCaig (13:17):

Is it risk or is the fact that it upsets their perspective because they're too close?

Jason Rigby (13:21):

Well he gets into that actually. He gets into how do you understand the culture of an ancient tribe? And then that's so much variable. And the-

Alexander McCaig (13:31):

So variable.

Jason Rigby (13:32):

Now you're now you're taking these sites and then you're putting dogma into it and then you're making a decision on how these people lived-

Alexander McCaig (13:43):

Think about like interpretations of Egyptian hieroglyphics. They know the flavor and tone of what that little raven or the crow is on the thing. But when you put the combination of it together, it's really the gathered perspective over time where someone says, "Oh, this is how they must've felt." Don't tell me, "This is how they must've felt." I want to know for a fact. And if I can't know for a fact and leave it at that. It's impossible for you to know an ancient civilization, truly know who they are without directly contacting them.

Jason Rigby (14:11):

Yeah and he gets into it. It's because there's so much specialization that you have this micro historical way. And so yeah, you may have an Inca Empire, but then you have all these different sites with all these people that have worked 25 plus years on them. And he says, "As an aggregate, when we look at all these random studies, being able to take that data and put it together and then analyze it, and then find these similarities and causes that, now we start to assimilate truth."

Alexander McCaig (14:40):

Remove the biases from each of those guys' datasets.

Jason Rigby (14:42):

Exactly. But you have to holistically understand the entire system.

Alexander McCaig (14:48):

Yeah. You can't just have a microcosm view and say, "I know it." That's an unbalanced perspective of this world. You need to have both. If you don't live in balance, then you don't have the full picture.

Jason Rigby (14:59):

No.

Alexander McCaig (15:00):

And they're saying that this microcosm is frankly more important than the macrocosm. Well, how is that to say for the entire earth or the universe that we're sitting in?

Jason Rigby (15:08):

Yeah and so they actually appreciate the generalized model of big data because everything is so localized.

Alexander McCaig (15:15):

It's localized and they can test against that model. It just gives them more things to test or hypothesis against. It strengthens their case.

Jason Rigby (15:22):

Yeah and I like how they went into the Inca Empire a little bit more. They were talking about at its peak in the 16th century. And they said this, if the Inca Empire were in the old world it would stretch from St. Petersburg in the north to Cairo in the south.

Alexander McCaig (15:37):

St. Petersburg, I'm looking at the map.

Jason Rigby (15:39):

St. Petersburg in Russia.

Alexander McCaig (15:41):

That's a huge... Well yeah.

Jason Rigby (15:45):

[crosstalk 00:15:45] all the way to Egypt.

Alexander McCaig (15:45):

Obviously if I took South America and put it up here, yeah. Okay. Duh. So why would you say that? Why wouldn't you just use South America? What kind of a-

Jason Rigby (15:53):

He's probably European and so... It's enormous. That's a big data challenge that accomplishes over five modern republics in today's term. Millions of people, dozens of groups, and one of the most geographically diverse areas from the driest desert in the world to the wettest rain forest in the world and everything in between as you go up the Andes on one side and down the other.

Alexander McCaig (16:12):

Yeah.

Jason Rigby (16:13):

And so now you have, Spanish conquest, and then with history, we've created this narrative on Spanish conquest. So now we're taking that narrative-

Alexander McCaig (16:23):

Does it fit the narrative?

Jason Rigby (16:25):

Yes. And then putting that into this form of domination, into these little microcosmic studies. Do you see where this goes?

Alexander McCaig (16:36):

Yeah, I do. We don't have to beat on the archeologists. I love archeology. I really do but this is like a little off. This-

Jason Rigby (16:47):

Yeah, they asked this question though. How do you ensure the quality of your data sets, particularly in a field like archeology, where you're often dealing with imperfect or incompetent information? They actually said that, and then they're asking the archeologist. He said this, "We've been careful to structure geo as a peer review kind of system internally, which I like that it is crowdsource in that many people are working on it, but it's not just wide open crowdsourcing. We have teams of researchers who are experts in their fields. They have come to the project with specific research questions that they want to address. They're working with their students and the students are working directly with them as regional editors for their project. They review their team site identifications and then we, as the general editor do the final review on those before they are committed to the database."

Jason Rigby (17:27):

No, no, no, no, no. So you're seeing exactly what I'm seeing.

Alexander McCaig (17:34):

It reminds me of the old newspaper model.

Jason Rigby (17:35):

Yes, yes it does. Yeah. Where the editor in chief has all the-

Alexander McCaig (17:40):

No matter all the good stuff you right, the editor in chief can be like, "Nope," or "Yep."

Jason Rigby (17:43):

Because they have regional editors and general editors to make sure that nothing was missed and then they don't have false negatives. But then you have bias and if those... It depends on those regional and generals. Because I want to shove this, I want to shove TARTLE into this model. Where if you could take your editors, you could take your students, you could take these people that are working on these sites and let's say there's 5,000 of them. And then out of those 5,000 people, they could remain anonymous so they're not putting dirt, because in high academy-

Alexander McCaig (18:14):

They're not putting their reputation and stuff on it.

Jason Rigby (18:19):

Because high academy one's false move and you're done. You know what I mean? And a lot of people don't want to take that risk.

Alexander McCaig (18:25):

No, but if you're anonymous, you're willing to share.

Jason Rigby (18:27):

Then we start asking questions to these 5,000.

Alexander McCaig (18:29):

Let's do the Peruvian archeologist data packet.

Jason Rigby (18:33):

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Alexander McCaig (18:34):

Cool.

Jason Rigby (18:34):

Yeah. And then you would be able to find... If people knew they were truly anonymous and it was encrypted through blockchain, like there was absolutely no way that they could find out and you start asking them questions related to this as experts now you're going to get a lot more truthful dataset.

Alexander McCaig (18:50):

Yeah, rather than someone worried about saying the wrong thing.

Jason Rigby (18:52):

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Alexander McCaig (18:53):

How many doctors don't want to come out with like their way of doing something and then the field, like so many people just hammer them or people that come out against the dairy industry and just get walloped by these lobbyists.

Jason Rigby (19:05):

Yes.

Alexander McCaig (19:05):

Just hammered.

Jason Rigby (19:07):

Yes.

Alexander McCaig (19:07):

Where people come out against pharma because they have like, some other nutraceutical thing or some sort of holistic organic approach homeopathic. And they just get just destroyed, just absolutely obliterated. And then everyone's like, "Well, I don't want to come out now."

Jason Rigby (19:24):

Yeah, I was just saying to a PhD doctor last night and he was talking about schizophrenia and cannabis. And so the studies are, because we have this war on drugs and all drugs are bad.

Alexander McCaig (19:33):

Why is it a war? Why is everything a freaking war?

Jason Rigby (19:36):

I know yeah. And so they were saying, the studies were showing that cannabis doesn't... People are saying, it causes schizophrenia. They're saying it doesn't cause schizophrenia. It can elevate because you get paranoid on-

Alexander McCaig (19:48):

You're already schizophrenic.

Jason Rigby (19:50):

Yeah. You may be leaning in that direction, which what they were talking about one of the main researchers for schizophrenia, world leaders in this, he was saying basically how schizophrenia, if you want to view it this way is... This gets into our language episode and you're going to love this. When you talk to me, I'm looking at your mouth, I'm looking at your eyes, I'm looking at your body language and I'm interpreting how I want to interpret it. Whether it may be right or wrong, I don't know.

Alexander McCaig (20:17):

How do you feel about me right now?

Jason Rigby (20:18):

Yeah, you kind of have, like you're thinking.

Alexander McCaig (20:22):

You know this is my thinking face.

Jason Rigby (20:22):

Yeah you're thinking, you got your arms crossed, you're paying attention to what I'm saying. That's what I'm viewing. You may be thinking about-

Alexander McCaig (20:28):

No, I'm thinking about what you're saying.

Jason Rigby (20:29):

... 10 other things but those ads you've been getting.

Alexander McCaig (20:34):

Ridiculous. This is why you have VPNs folks.

Jason Rigby (20:36):

Yeah. He was saying somebody that's schizophrenic just has this ability to be able to view that thought process in a different way. So they're looking at it and saying they're interpreting it differently. That's all schizophrenia is, is an interpretation. Like I'm looking at you now and if I was schizophrenic, I would interpret, "Well, is Alex upset at me? Alex is against me? What is he plotting against me?" You see what I'm saying? So it's just a thought process, which we know how powerful thoughts are and I'm not teeing you up for that.

Alexander McCaig (21:09):

This is what these... You want a dollar. This is what these professionals are saying?

Jason Rigby (21:15):

Yes.

Alexander McCaig (21:15):

I don't know Jack about schizophrenia.

Jason Rigby (21:18):

Yeah.

Alexander McCaig (21:19):

But that's quite an interesting-

Jason Rigby (21:20):

But doesn't that sound interesting? Because to me that gives hope. Instead of saying, cannabis is bad, or schizophrenia, you have this, huge... Because we're all mental in some form. I mean, you could probably study me a bunch. You know this, you could study me a bunch and come up with all kinds of-

Alexander McCaig (21:38):

I'd be scared what I'd find on you.

Jason Rigby (21:39):

Yeah. Yeah. All those four letter and three letter abbreviation, they're all for me. So, but it gives you hope because it's like, this is just the thought process that you're thinking. So let's work on changing your thought process or maybe this is you and you have a different view in all these different dimensions.

Alexander McCaig (21:57):

Come on.

Jason Rigby (21:58):

I teased you. We won't get into that.

Alexander McCaig (22:01):

You want $20. Here's $20.

Jason Rigby (22:05):

So let's end this podcast with this.

Alexander McCaig (22:07):

Thank you.

Jason Rigby (22:08):

Where would you like to see this field they asked this leading expert? Where would you like to see this field go over the next 10 years? What's your vision for how this might all come together? And I want you to speak to the second part. Cooperation and ethical intersection are the two things, I think are most important. These two parallel tracks in terms of data aggregation that are going on right now. We've got initiatives like Open Context, which is a pioneer in open data for archeology plus another initiatives.

Jason Rigby (22:32):

But I'd like the ethical introspection and that's something at TARTLE, because I want to bridge it to the ethical introspection with TARTLE and get into a little bit how cooperation and ethical intersection is with TARTLE.

Alexander McCaig (22:43):

How did we acquire this data? Was it ethical in the way we acquired it? I'm fortunate enough to speak with some of the most renowned anthropologist in the world for social determinants of health. Lucky me, because I created a tool like a good pic that is ethical, that allows them to source information where it's like, "Wow, I can feel good about what I got and it's also better than what I was getting." Because right now for people that are in these research positions sometimes they get data, they're like, "Where did this come from?" Like in all seriousness, it's like you look at the guy that delivered to you it's like, "Where'd you get this? How did you get it?" And they're bummed out because it's all they have to use even they know it was sourced like unethically.

Alexander McCaig (23:26):

So when you talk about like the collective or the collaborative coming together, it's the same concept of what we're talking about with everybody across the globe coming together to solve something. That's that collective. And if you can do that collective unity for solving an issue or whatever it might be, an analysis of a geological site, you can do it ethically and you can really feel good about that process. And just because some things are ethical it doesn't mean they have to be inefficient. And it doesn't mean that they have to be ridiculously expensive. It doesn't need to work like that. You just have the proper architecture to come together and have that sort of tool for that sort of solve.

Alexander McCaig (24:06):

So when I look at that, I think it's fantastic what they're talking about. That is the future and whatever is going on with the social determinant of health, or if you're down in Peru trying to study a civilization, they're all going to share in what that new macro trend is. The macro trend is the acquisition of data ethically for and putting together collectively to solve what needs to be solved.

Jason Rigby (24:28):

Perfect. I just glanced at your watch and it's 11:11 so we're out.

Announcer (24:38):

Thank you for listening to TARTLE Cast with your hosts, Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby where humanity steps into the future and source data defines the path.

Announcer (24:55):

What's your data worth?