ABSTRACT
This chapter explores technology-enabled pattern recognition and how it is shaping culture in implicit and explicit ways today. It focuses on the issue of pattern recognition and its relationship to evolution, ethnography, and the field of anthropology at large given by Brigitte Jordan. The chapter explains the fusion of ethnographic practices with the craft of analytics, as well as the application of ethnographic methods to understanding the cultural implications of analytics, algorithms, and massive data, 'ethnographic analytics'. It focuses on how technology is driving unprecedented data collection and how the nature of data itself is changing, which affects pattern recognition. Understanding pattern recognition in analytics must begin with tracing the tremendous growth and changes in types of data. Since the very start of our species, environmental conditions and tool development have led to a stronger understanding and interpretation of the world around us. In recent times, the proliferation of technology has expanded data types, speed, granularity, interpretation, and quantity.
