Golden Copy: Data's Hot New Accessory

At Teradata Partners last week, I was again intrigued by an observation from science author David Eagleman, this time in person. [I wrote in 2014 about his earlier book, "Incognito," relating his take on how the brain interprets data from the eyes to how automated systems rapidly process financial data for trading decisions in the markets.]

Eagleman last year published "The Brain: The Story of You," and produced a companion TV series for PBS. At the company's conference, he related an experiment in which market indicators could be fed into a vest that has an array of small vibration motors, whose wearer then chooses a green or red button based on the feeling those motors convey. Designed to help hearing-impaired people feel speech, the vest's function could be altered so signals based on financial markets data could drive the motors.

This would make so-called "gut feelings" and hunches about the market an actual functional system, not something to be dismissed or laughed at. Choosing a button to press based on the stimuli determines whether the stock is bought or sold, Eagleman revealed in his presentation.

For institutions dealing with more than just single transactional decisions, Eagleman's vest, which also is named with the acronym VEST, for Versatile Extra-Sensory Transducer, could provide a feel for information that would otherwise have to be pulled from stores of reference data, and then processed or interpreted to yield insights.

This is an exciting idea, even more impactful than finding similarities between natural neurological data processing and automated financial markets data processing. VEST, if used widely as a tool to manage data for a portfolio, could both streamline reading and understanding of reference data, and increase the accuracy of the processing of data, by also using another human sense to read that data. It could serve as a check or balance on flawed reading and evaluation of data as performed by mere fallible human eyes and brains.