What is Warm Data?

“Information that does not take into account the full scope of interrelationality in a system is likely to inspire misguided decision-making, which compounds already “wicked” problems. Warm Data is not meant to replace or in any way diminish other data, but rather it is meant to keep data of certain sorts “warm” — with a nest of relations intact.”
— Nora Bateson

Warm Data is information about the interrelationships that connect elements of a complex system. Put another way, Warm Data is transcontextual information. Warm Data captures the qualitative dynamics and offers another dimension of understanding to what is learned through quantitative data, (cold data). The implications for the uses of Warm Data are staggering, and may offer a whole new dimension to the tools of information science we have to work with at present.

Warm Data is a specific kind of information about the way parts of a complex system, such as members of a family, organisms in the oceans, institutions in society, or departments of organisation, come together to give vitality to that system. By contrast, other data will describe only the parts, while Warm Data describes their interplay in context. Warm Data illustrates vital relationships between many parts of a system. For example, to understand a family, one must understand not only the family members, but also the relationships between them, that is, the warm data. In such cases, warm data is used to better understand and improve responses to issues that are located in the relational dynamics. Examples include understanding the systemic risks in health, ecology, economic systems, education systems and many more. The typical approach to issues decontextualises specific information, which in turn can generate mistakes. On the other hand, warm data promotes coherent understanding of living systems.

Complex, systemic challenges are shaped by the interaction of multiple contexts—the economy, nature, politics, culture, technology, etc. —and to effectively address such challenges, we have to understand the transcontextual interdependence. With this awareness, we can shape responses to meet the complexity around us effectively. Without it, we often enact simple responses to complex challenges which in turn create their own problems.

Warm Data familiarizes groups of people with the ways in which the contexts of their lives marinate and overlap into each other, and it offers an introduction to the complexity of their own lives so that they may better see the complexity of others. Through this discovery, people begin to see how vital it is to tend to their families, communities, and the land, and they are able to respond to emergencies with warmth.

Hope lies in the very fact that, as living beings, we are made for relationship. It is only possible to express our humanity in relationship to other human beings. We exude warm data in our eyes, our smiles, our verbal and non-verbal conversations, and the importance we attune to relationships with others at the personal, family, and community levels and in local, national, and global contexts. We also can reach into ancient wisdom to add to our store of warm data and the capabilities unleashed when ‘I see you in me and me in you’. Our well-being and that of our planet is possible only if we permit ourselves to perceive and embrace the rich expressions of who we are as living human communities and to find a way in relationship. This will require warmth and rigorous attention to relational integrity above the anxiety to control.

At times Warm Data is also described more simply as: Information that is alive.

Is it possible to respond to the living world without information that is also alive?

Why is Warm Data important?

In order to interface with any complex system without disrupting the circuitry of the interdependencies that give it its integrity, we must look at the spread of relationships that make the system robust. Using only analysis of statistical data will offer conclusions that can point to actions that are out of sync with the complexity of the situation. But information without context and interrelationality is likely to lead us toward actions that are misinformed, thereby creating further destructive patterns.

What fields is Warm Data relevant to?

Everything. Business, medical, economics, development, ecological understanding, cross cultural diplomacy, and more. The International Bateson Institute will make this data available to political, cultural, economic, educational, and arts sectors.

Wherever there are complex systems and ‘wicked problems’, there is also Warm Data.

“At present there is no existing science whose special interest is the combining of pieces of information. But I shall argue that the evolutionary process must depend upon such double increments of information.

Every evolutionary step is an addition of information to an already existing system. Because this is so, the combinations, harmonies, and discords between successive pieces and layers of information will present many problems of survival and determine many directions of change.”
— Gregory Bateson, Mind & Nature, 1979