CNN has done a feature, "A new way of looking at the world" that focuses on the growing diversity and use of visualization tools to express data in interesting, instructional and also beautiful ways. In other words, exactly the stuff this blog is made of!
What is a graph? A graph is a more accessible, easier and faster way of interpreting information that otherwise may take a certain expertise, and certainly greater time, to comprehend. Using this principle to visualize increasingly "data" - such as Ben Fry's work on Darwin's The Origin of Species - gives a whole new agency to visualization. Though visualization projects are more time-consuming for a "user" to create, they are much like Wikipedia entries in terms of their ability to instruct, social accessibility and function. I've been looking for a great visual on the health care legislation - so I'm excited to hear about Many Eyes, which features, among other great projects, visuals galore on issues surrounding the contentious health care debate.
Another development that the article touches on in the field of visualization is the ability to provide new insight on certain social, behavioral, environmental etc ideas and norms. Bruce Mau, who calls the merging of technical and cultural changes a "social revolution," has a particularly interesting installation that questions the way we, as humans, measure wealth. The installation makes us wonder - how did our mass culture form in such a way that we value money - a complete social construction - over something as critical and physically real as the number of species on earth?
If the proliferation and accessibility of such tools continues to grow, maybe a "visual" Wikipedia isn't so far-fetched?
1 comment:
This is cool cause they seem to be trying to demystify the idea of "data" and make graphs and data presentation as a concept more accessible to the average information consumer. LIKE ME.
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