What can we get from visualisation?

An old saying 'a picture is worth a thousand words' is a really valid statement solidifying the term 'visualisation' from its representation of clusters of elements such as dots, lines, colours etc. 

They are like artworks combined the concepts of interestingness, interaction and design. There are some fantastic infosthetics in the following site:   http://infosthetics.com/

Despite the fact that data visualisations are quite appealing to us from its visual presentation, they are increasingly becoming ubiquitous within visual culture because occasionally it can involve storytelling, as in seeing them as an assumption that they 'speak' for themselves from the construction being made. Visualisation, in a deeper sense, is an expression to turn the abstractive, conceptual subjects into a concrete meaning by presenting in infographics. So what can we see through our growing visibility of data? 

THE ENGAGEMENT

Yes, it's our engagement, an imaginative engagement with pictures that we do not normally have, it rhetorically questions in the act of how our relationship with images is formed from what we can project on them. For instance, the dashed line, which is to represent the borders but more importantly, it could be put in an image of visual procedure, plays a role as an instructor teaching us how we manipulate some places or letting us to collect the trace so we know how we can operate on certain devices.  Hence, it supplies a more intricate visual detail so that it functions in a way of making the picture more expressive. It inevitably breaks down the limitation of our ability to make an association between the action being built up through our brain and the comprehension goes beyond what the images are conventionally presented. It's more of an enthusiasm, or an obsession to discover our sense of resonance in the process, which is to make invisible to be visible. Timo has given us a lot of examples illustrating the dashed line can be symbolized as hidden geometry, movement, paths, ephemeral material.

The dashed line here carries a role of representing an instruction

 Moreover, the dashed line could be the (there you go, this is the dashed line)......................... expectation. 

you may not notice that dashed line is immersed in your life, even when you are waiting to open a page, the screen will show:   OPENING THE PAGE...........   ;  or when you are going to watch a video, it says   LOADING......

THE CONCRETE NUMBER

Visualisation is also about the way the numbers are displayed. In some cases such as the measurement of how many calories are contained within certain amount of food, as for calories, a unit, is an unspecified term cannot be represented graphically, the resemblance is able to give us an idea of the entity through the display of variety of food. Other examples such as the massive amount of tweets and the web pages on the internet, all these concepts can only be generated through firmly fixed on the visual landscape of social media. Number is needed to take another form to reveal the reality, and that should be clearly, succinctly and above all quickly presented to have impact. Hence, through visualisation, one of its excellent aims is to give the viewer the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time with the least ink in the smallest space. (Yale University Professor Emeritus Edward Tufte)

This is the website of information, the lines, dots, the formation of the shape geometrically and implicitly hint at the concept of 'numbers' in this case, the pattern is beautifully highlighting the importance of visualisation

THE CONSCIOUSNESS
Also the visualisation is not just simply about getting the information but what we can do with this information, what reflection it makes, how it affects us socially and changes our behaviour towards it. The effectiveness has something to do with how it alters our perceptions of what we believe from what social data looks like. Mostly, social data from visualisation makes it even authoritative than a text, as it can prompt responses more instant, like a part of a conversation to the audience, rather than being a stand-alone statement. The meaning behind can be an inference from the question preceding it, and the question is raised up in the way we interpret either positive or negative from our visibility. Through visualisation, it builds upon the understanding as a social act, a form of behaviour, a current trend that we all need to take concern with, just a typical example such as by looking at the data of a map in Amazon, you can see where the cluster of lines is most dense in an infographic, so to make a more accurate assumption of which books are more popular and well known and subsequently predicting what kind of books can be more sellable in this trend. To visualise the data, with each value representing an icon, and a line representing an association between each value, our consciousness will become much more active from the transparency.

This is a friendship network of children in a US school, the data was collected by asking the participants who their friends are. It directly shows how the social relation is happening in the school when races and ages are marked by the use of different colours. From this illustration, it explicitly tells us more than it just shows, it isn't just about the interaction between each of them.What we might notice more is the four dots that are being ostracized from anyone of the groups on the left hand side of this data visualisation, many factors can be the cause of their isolation and therefore, the schools should be have more awareness of them. In this aspect I just mentioned, a data visualisation has the possibility leading us to think out of the border.

So after we are encouraged to engage with the data image, find out the data sources and make sense of them, ultimately to evoke our consciousness from what we have seen, we are fulfilled of this kind of streamline visual metaphor. This entire process goes in a cause and effect relationship from our eyes, it's amazing to know that these visual creation is often uncanny in aesthetic, and that this artistic practices have contributed all these implication to information visualisation when a picture can unite all the collectives and extend its subjectivity within the simplicity, what else can be more articulate? 

   

images sources are from: http://www.flickr.com

References

Arnell, T(2006), the dashed line in use, <http://www.nearfield.org/2006/09/the-dashed-line-in-use>

http://infosthetics.com/archives/2007/01/how_does_200_calories_look_like.html

The commons

The internet is a form of commons, it's gifted and has granted us a great chance of having further exploration of the existing issues, equally opening up the online debate, allowing everyone to have a voice. We can say COMMONS are resources held in common, not privately own or belong to any particular individuals but rather to be everyone's property, which are non-exclusive and accessible. SHARING is a better word to describe them. Why is that? In a sense, the commons cannot be commodified, in other words, their nature are to share ownership as widely. Furthermore, COMMONS are meant to be preserved regardless of any forms of return of capital, such aspect is to maintain them to our next generation at a minimum of not degrading them. 

The COMMONS we are talking about here are intangible, digital commons have provided by the internet are information and knowledge resources that can be created and re-created, used and re-used , freely available for everyone to do further editing, adjustment, reconstruction to generate a better interactive environment among the community. These sources embody the act of openness and constructiveness, establishing the more active role in our norms.

In other words, COMMONS are internationally known and also represented as a movement spreading around the globe, building up its self-recognition to every user, they have their features for every user to distinguish them from one another, such as Wikipedia, a broad website for us to learn the brief idea of the concepts, we wouldn't use Youtube to do so as we know Youtube is primarily for searching videos and vice versa. Each of them have clearly modified itself as a symbol, a brand for its own market. COMMONS manage their own business and get themselves more advanced by the participants, the users who help them to grow and transform them to newer mode of production.

With COMMONS bombardment, it leads to what we call the economy of COMMONS when it comes to the whole system renews itself by three new components: the distributed communities passionately are working together simultaneously to build up the online social connection on the collaborative multi-platform and internet based technolgies by the foundations. The knowledge, code and design are abundance and easily to be duplicated through the availability of internet download.  As for COMMONS, this happens from time to time since they are not marketable and therefore, users tend to neglect their act as the invasion of the intellectual right of each production.

The establishment of COMMONS copyright is just like online battle to protect the information originality, it's an attempt to advocate the respect of the producer, it's necessarily to apply this approach towards every COMMON. I mean, internet is a COMMON itself, also a mix of COMMONS differ from each other, we do have the duty to stop any disruption or abuse of information, not letting it to go chaotic.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/labguest/3287937707/Creative commons TM Logo Idea
Here is someone's design of trademark logo for creative commons property. Creative commons licensed media encourages open minds and open eyes and hence, the C.C becomes a wide-eyed observer of the contents have offered via the net

References

Walljasper, J(2010), The commons moments is now, Commondreams.org,<http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/01/24-0>

Meretz, S(2010), Ten theses about global commons movement, P2P Foundation<http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/ten-theses-about-global-commons-movement/2011/01/05>

Monbiot, G(2010), Reclaim the cyber-commons, Monbiot.com,<http://www.monbiot.com/2010/12/13/reclaim-the-cyber-commons/>

Good R and Bauwens M(2010), From Open business models to an economy of the commons, Robin good,<http://www.masternewmedia.org/from-open-business-models-to-an-economy-of-the-commons/>

Attention!! infotention!!

Attention!!!!

Infotention? 

Is this term really just about 'information' and 'attention'?

Or does it have something to do with multitasking, procrastination, seeking or more? 

Let's find out what it really is... Here comes a simple example:

from http://jensustathought.blogspot.com.au/2008_04_01_archive.html

What can you see from this image? A large cup or two faces?

This image illustrates the concept of infotention, what can you see within this image? a cup or two faces? It shows what colour or shape you pay more attention to when you see either of them first.
      

The reformation of the structure is now turning our world to an information economy, which it enhances the cyberspace as net is overflowing with information. This is a shift in dominating our society with mass production in practice. For me, INFOTENTION is regarded as a fast food principle, fast and convenient, we can easily get it but not healthy of getting it too much, the larger amount we get, unknowingly the more fat we stuff into our body just like how brain will be dysfunctioning by gathering too much of information. The point is why information is that appealing to us? Is it just because we cannot avoid seeing them? Panksepp suggests such motivation is from the emotional state such as curiosity, interest, foraging, engagement, craving and finally it comes with SEEKING.   

Look around and think what you are seeing, the chairs? table? TV? wardrobe? THINK AGAIN, you are actually receiving the data and information out there, from your naked eyes, you perceive from what you really see and turn them into your data. Here, it's all about perception...and human is seeking perception wherever we go, we cannot avoid or stop doing this...This is just one typical example of the concept of our refreshing memory from our searching engines, like Google, Safari, Firefox, our brain is another searching engine itself. Apart from the seeking from reality, nowadays, we focus more on media use and hence it leads us to have more desire of gaining information to the point of we are even wondering about our sanity, how much obsession we get from information...ARE WE DROWNING IN THE SEA OF INFORMATION? 

This hyperactivity effectively applies to every piece of information we get from net-based communication because the constant information has further extended our capacity to accommodate the data by remodeling our brains to take it. At the same time, our attention span becomes shorter than ever since the modern world bombards us with stimuli, most of us will go with what trend brings to us, the updates of texts, tweets, youtube videos, status update on facebook, new products ad also capture our eyes as easy as it is. Our growing concern about these endless interruption firstly will cause the change of the base of our behaviour. The overflowing information persistently affects our productivity from our performance of accomplishing a task in a longer time before. Why is that? we have drawn our attention to the social networks, our media devices produce more interesting information unlike the banal ones we are doing, especially for teens, not surprisingly knowing, we are even more easily to be distracted. Just by saying that, back to the term INFOTENTION again, information does need our attention, but because of that, it has triggered our procrastination to do something more important. 

Procrastination is the product of multitasking. Teens these days see multitasking as their second nature. As if multitasking should be a skill that the teens need to acquire for adapting this so-called 'information society'. In other words, multitasking is the representation of we have distributed uneven effort to each task we are doing instead of putting our full effort to finish the most necessary one. So what makes us worry is that too much information could be the freedom from necessity and that we would drastically be losing our balance to our time management.   

What follows next? we then become not mindfully deciding which task we should finish first because we have already been having continuous partial attention to everything we do. Also, paying too much information of the media uses would unintentionally make our bodies being compromised in some way. For instance, we still have more concern with the status update on facebook even though we have tiny bit of time waiting in the queue, such behaviour can be understood from what Linda Stone says in the interview, she states that our mind is engaged and our body is 'hanging out'. 

However, for Linda Stone herself, multitasking might not completely a bad thing, a busy person like her finds it more productive by multitasking. Momentarily, she needs to move between tasks rapidly, she can manage to do the activities well, hence, we conclude, infotention is not always create negative effect. It does create positivity for some users like Linda Stone. 

To say that to critically engage with the idea of infotention, it should not be seen as one-sided, instead, this ongoing process is needed to break down for analyzing as it incorporates a range of human's temporary desire. Therefore, the new form of technical logic that have made us, the users as the most saleable asset. In addition, we take pictures and post them on the internet for file sharing with others as we want to get attention from the imagined world to see us image. So define this, we are just another form of infotention on the internet as well? 

NOW THINK AGAIN, if infotention hierarchically keeps invading into our lives, what are we going to end up with?  

ATTENTION!! NOW IT'S TIME TO PUT SOME LIMITS to our actions!!

Reference

Henry, J(2010), Multitasking and Continuous Partial Attention: An interview with Linda Stone

(Part one), Confession of an ACA-Fan, <http://henryjenkins.org/2010/11/multitasking_and_continuous_pa.html>

Kinsley, S (2010), The technics of Attention, Paying Attention, <http://payingattention.org/2010/10/12/the-technics-of-attention/>

Goldhaber. M. H (1997), Attention Shoppers!, Wired, <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.12/es_attention.html>
O'Malley, M(2010), Attention and information, The Aporetic, <http://theaporetic.com/?p=228>
Temple, J(2011), All those tweets, apps, updates may drain brain, San Fransciso Chronicle, April 17, <http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/All-those-tweets-apps-updates-may-drain-brain-2374725.php>

Yoffe, E(2009), Seeking: How the brain hard-wires us to love Google, Twitter, and texting. And why that's dangerous, Slate, <http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2009/08/seeking.html>

image:
http://jensustathought.blogspot.com.au/2008_04_01_archive.html

Archive

What is archive?

Archive plays a role as a recording of all the memories and accumulation in order for individuals and organizations to check back the primary sources in the past. The documentation that are selected have been preserving for a long term, also none of them are identical copies, instead, they are distinctively existing in their own values to the relevant functions and institutions. It's a collective source of knowledge controlling over the practice of organizing, rearranging, accessing data to achieve the goal of helping us to remain a better continuous history.

This is a common image of what an actual archive looks like, its tidiness offers a foundation of providing organised data for better future viewing 

Web archiving is the most common way to collect the data from world wide web, that is, its massive size will operate automated collection.

Since Archive is everywhere, from the private sector such as academic learning to business sector and government sector. Everyone can be a great and active archivist as long as we are willing to put everything in order. For instance, photos in our phones and games in our computer are systematically kinds of archive. All these archive can be rearranged for a better viewing experience since classification is a key way to do so, we all have this experience by putting things with similar characteristics or functions. For instance, Facebook is a large system of archive when it comes to the point of easily classify our favourites, games, groups, friends, photos etc. A typical example will be list of friends, which they have made them even more specific by sorting them out into close friends, favourites, school friends or any other kinds. In other words, this is the best solution to find out the records of people and things, quoted 'when records and archiving professionals use the term 'archive' they are referring to the permanent storage of records, not merely their removal from current usage' (Wikipedia)

Archive, surely is not just a term for demonstrating the historical records but representing a power, an authoratative state ruling and governing our life in social order, without its existance, we might lose our balance to see things in a logical order since it's fundamentally keeps our ongoing data in a right place, in the sake of reminding us where to get back to it. It's everywhere, everything, not only for individual uses but also for business for profit, it's a must for them to corporate archives in order to maintain items related to the administration.

Other institutions such as schools have their own archive too. A website called My school builds upon its archive system sharing information about the performance of schools and resources that the public may be needed, in result of doing this, more parents would have the willingness, or let's say the DESIRE to do more research for their children to get better education. Users can view wider range of information instead of going to a particular school in person because it provides further resources to check online over time. This valuable tool undoubtedly stimulate more responses for the communities and has an effect on intergrating and unifying clearer utility for all sorts of data sharing.

When knowing archive is all around us, it has been evolving until now and getting more influential later. This turns into what we call it an ARCHIVE FEVER. What association has arise from archive fever? Our DESIRE, the desire that we are getting trapped into this fascination, it turns us into those possessive ones having an attempt to sort out all our memories into different blocks. To make it clear, archive fever is like a trend, has implanted its ideological complex into our brain so we've got this inception, to be motivated to get involved into this act, the archive act to fulfil our desire in life.  CAN WE DEFINE IT AS A FLOOD?

Archive, maybe also a way to get attention, the fact that we notice is those data that have been selected in a particular folder will be much more noticeable than the random ones.

Ultimately, this fever will be a long lasting progress because such innovation incredibly amplified and revive our DESIRE to trace back what was happening before, remaining our personal resources and potentially enriching our exploration and experiences in life...

Everyone should be an active achivist, catching an archive fever...

references:

Archive, Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive>

My school <http://www.myschool.edu.au/>

Sharon Howard(2007), Reposted: archive fever: a dusty digression, Early Modern notes, <http://earlymodernnotes.wordpress.com/2007/09/25/reposted-archive-fever-a-dusty-digression/>

Matthew Ogle(2010), Archive fever, Mattogle.com, <http://mattogle.com/archivefever/>