This posting, focused on Chapter 07.A, “Seeing the World in Data” by Nathan Yau, will be led by Paola. Assigned to respond to this post are Bryan S., Scott, Evelyn and Corey. Paola, please have your post up by 5pm on Friday, May 4th. Those assigned to reply, your due date is 5pm on Monday, May 7th. I highly recommend that you do this soon, before the madness of reviews really sets in.
-
Recent Posts
Archives
Categories
Catalytic Mapping Seminar 
5 Comments
“Seeing the World in Data” is essentially about the process from collection to the visualization of data. The essay is divided in five sections: Mass Observation, Data Collection, Analysis, Interaction, and Looking Forward. Mass Observation serves as a precedent on the potential of the collection of data using multiple people to gather that data. The precedent however, is an example from a time before technology was not as advanced as now. Technology according to Nathan Yua (the author), can open a door to a better and easier collection of data. However, he warns the need for tweaking software in order to keep users privacy intact. The problem with freshly collected data is that it has to pass through a filter that analyzes it keeping only the useful data and disregards the data which is irrelevant. Interaction essentially is the ability to take the data provided to create visualizations. In this section, Yua refers to dynamic online mapping such as: google maps, bing, yahoo, etc. as neocartography. Finally, Looking Forward says that the most important thing is data. Yua closes his essay with the statement that “Computers, through data, visualization, and interfaces can bring us closer.”
By doing a summary of this part of chapter 7 I seek to find understanding of the connection between all its components. For me, the most important thing in the whole part is the fact that Yua suggests that computers bring us together. Often in class, we have discussed that our language is limited to specific words meaning specific things or on the contrary meaning way too many things. Then, computers with their visualizations don’t need the support from a specific language to be understood by the person reading or watching. However, I also agree with the problematic of the filtering of data. A lot of us (if not everyone) has found false data when using search engines which should serve as a filtering tool of data for their algorithmic nature. Can a visualization coming from data collected online be legit and of the same impact as the precedent used (Mass Observation)? If so, how? If not, why?
My approach to how I processed this was a little different, though not neccesarily contradictory to your take away Paola.
Last night I was reading this essay while the storm was rolling through Lubbock. I really began to think about the “data” of the storm as I tracked the storm in real time through the local news casts doplar.
~200 years ago when the first settlers were settling the plains the weather could be bright and sunny one minute, and no less than 15 minutes later everything they own wiped out by a tornado or strong winds. They had no forewarning and not even a sense of predicative weather.
Fast forward too about 80 years ago as radio’s became more widespread to the population. One could get a brief window of warning as a radio signal traveled from a few towns over warning about weather they were recieving. Predicative weather forecasting existed, but it was in its infant stages that looked more at trends rather than science.
Starting in the 60’s and 70’s the science really began to advance and the advent of television provided a media for which the data to be relayed over a longer distance. Because of the advances in meteorology enough of a forewarning could be given to hypothetically get out of a storms way or be fully prepared. However doplar/radar was still at a point where real time coverage wasnt able to be provided.
Quite a few more steps could probably be outlined between then and now, but whats important is where we are at now. Now I can watch a real time doplar feed on my television, laptop, or mobile devices. The extent of the data provided is so detailed as to be able to provide a mapping of lightening strikes, speed of the winds at a given point, air pressure, and quantity of percipitation.The predicative science’s behind meteorology can now give a fairly accurate outlook as much as a few weeks in advance. Satelite imagery can track tropical storms as they cross oceans, gaining in strength and turning into hurricanes.
Unfortunately I see consequences of these advances. Rather than sitting on my porch experiancing the “physical” manifestation of the storm, I am experiancing a data storm. Yes, I am more safe and informed, however does this not make me less rooted to the actual world I am living in? As the reading outlines, because of Technology we are now in an age where data of all kinds is more readily avaliable and capable of being represented in more complex ways. However I feel that we are begining to remove ourselves from there very substance that makes the data relevent. Rather than going outside and playing tag with their friends, kids now sit inside having poke wars on facebook and arguing with “friends” they have never met before but merely clicked a button to create a bond. We truely are begining to live in a matrix woven by the false lives we are living disconnected from reality. As we discussed earlier in the semester, how often to we walk around unfamiliar places staring at google maps on our phone rather than experiance the place and learning familiarity?
So where do we draw the line? To reap the benefits of communal data I believe it must be unfiltered. To be unfiltered does not mean that it cannot be checked and assigned relevency. Data as the reading refers to it is substantial because it is unfiltered. I think Yua, yourself, myself, and just about every other being in society can identify the current benefits and drawbacks of the proliferation of data accessabilities impact on society… so the really important part of the text is how do we move forward and both Yua and yourself keyed in on. I think precautions need to be taken to protect the individual from the data (ie: false data, living in the data rather than the world, privacy, etc…) as well as protecting the integrity and capabilities of the graphic expression of data, the visualization, as it continues to evolve.
I don’t disagree but I think the example you expose is extreme. I would not like to be caught in the middle of a thunderstorm…or any of the natural disasters that happen. Technology is not necessarily one of the main things to look on to keep ourselves informed as far as weather. Going back in years like you said, settlers knew depending on the conduct of animals and were more aware of the changes that there would be in the weather. Now in the present, we don’t stop to look at our surrounding enough because we depend on Television, radio, internet, phones, you name it. The problem is not the existence of those tools; the problem is us being so dependent on those tools. As far as data being unfiltered, Yua suggests that data is to be “analyzed” or in other words filtered. Data being filtered doesn’t necessarily mean disregarding other data it means selecting the data that is applicable and tangible for what is being researched, mapped, and discussed. It is simply like searching for something in “x” database (i.e. Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.) the search engine uses an algorithm to search for particular words you input. The data that shows up is not necessarily going to be helpful, you have to analyze it and select what you are going to use. In reality the data is not filtered when being collected, it is filtered when the user calls upon it. For instances, for our mapping assignments out of all the data we collect not all will be used.
I agree. I actually wrote my paper over this chapter prior to the designation on monday that it was supposed to be over chapter 6. A stronger example I used in my text was Professor Lin’s quest at attempting to locate Ghengis Kahns tomb. I felt that his excercise really illustrated this essays points on the process that should be occuring. His methodology was to take what ammounts to about a 150,000 square miles (about 2/3rds the size of Texas) of sacred and restricted land in Mongolia and take the Satelite imagery from this area, chop it into ~1/2 mile square blocks, and then distribute it on the internet to willing participants with little or no background in archeology. These people are smart enough to tell if anything looks out of the ordinary, or if they are simply looking at forests, rivers, bedoins, etc… however if something does infact look out of place, they flag it for further review by specialists on Lin’s team. By doing this, within a few weeks the team had identified site’s that were worth visiting once they recieved permission from the Mongolian government. I think what this as well as the reading shows is that data can be almost unlimitless, and must be filtered to be of use. However once filtered and passed along, it continues to be filtered and analyzed as you said. I believe this is a principle opperation of life. For example, I decide im hungry, decide I want mexican food, then decide I want to eat at “x” establishment or cook in, followed by what I want to eat, followed by ingrediants (or perhaps the addition of salt), followed even by what end of the plate to start eating from. We are constantly filtering and analyzing. In many cases Technology has become the catalyst for this in our daily lives, and while I do think that we are overly dependant and this is potentially dangerous, it also has opened a new horizon for us in terms of graphical display and data filtering/representation.
To set up how I view technology I must first say that I do not believe in the concept of artificial or unnatural. Everything that ever has or ever will exist, whether we are aware of it or not, is of nature. This may seem rather obvious to most people but I think it is an important thing to discuses. I feel that when people use words like artificial and unnatural, they are facilitating a dangerous mindset. The mindset that we(humans) are somehow outside of nature or above it. Every little thing that we do is of nature and impacts it accordingly.
Now my opinion on technology is thinking about it less as a new separate tool, but just the current “sense” under-development by our species. Just like fish evolved eyes, some number of million years ago, to better orient themselves in their environment we have evolved technology to help us better orient ourselves in our current environment. Thanks to technology we can now sense that a storm is three days away. This data flow does not make how you experience the storm any less real; it is merely a different way for your brain to get the data. This idea of technology having right or wrongs, I think is just our way of personifying this new sense. To me it is amoral, and it is completely how one uses it that makes it have a moral consequence. My ability to hear is not right or wrong, but if I chose to ease drop on a private conversation then I have used that sense for a questionable reason. Over the generations we have developed how we filter our senses. We know as a society it is improper to ease drop or peep, and this same moral code is and will continue to develop with technology. I think in years to come Visual Complexity will be looked back on as how we began to develop a language to express this data. Just like written music evolved to express sound in a visible form, these maps and diagrams are how we are beginning to translating this data into a visible form. It is inevitable that we and other data cartographers (that sounds pretty cool) are going to cross various lines into taboo while we find the boundaries society is willing to deal with. This in my opinion is perfectly fine, as long as it is not done with malicious intent. As for this idea of being over dependent on technology, I can see where you all are coming from. I’d like to say we as a society are like a child with a new toy, completely obsessed. And that in the next few decades we will stop being so focused on technology and just let it become as ubiquitous to us as the invention of written language. There is a need for balance, and that is one of my goals as a person to have a balance of senses. This is something I feel has less to do with actual mapping and portraying of information, but more with how individuals and society appreciate the variety of senses we have. So I’m not completely sure how that has anything to do with how we interpreted or convey information.