I love learning why and how things are the way they are. Perhaps I can thank PBS for satisfying my childhood curiosity with countless instructional programs like Sesame Street, 3-2-1 Contact, This Old House, The Joy of Painting, and Julia Child, just to name a few. My favorite was Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. When it was “Picture …
Author: Michael
Choosing Your Own Career Journey
What do you want to do with your life? Who hasn’t dreaded hearing this question? Finding the answer can take many forms: a buddinging talent during childhood, a sudden epiphany, a meandering life-long quest. Often, the choice is specific and fairly well-defined, some thing to aspire to: doctor, lawyer, teacher, painter, musician, football player, and so on. …
Uniting for Understanding
Well, 2017 has gotten off to quite a start! If there’s one bright spot that has come out of the tumult of 2016 and ongoing unrest triggered by the new administration, it’s the resounding call to action to reassert and recommit to values and principles long taken for granted. People are reaffirming identities, freedoms, …
Towards the Good
For me, 2016 will go down as the year of the gut, when reason and restraint took a holiday. Foundations were shaken, bigly. Concepts like data, information, fact, and truth were all sent through the wringer. Reality became a crowdsourced phenomenon, a channel you could change with the push of a button if the broadcast didn’t …
Making Sense of the Information Implosion
Time to open Pandora’s Box! This post touches on some deep and controversial problems surrounding information today, most of which have been heightened by this year’s election. More work is needed to develop this thinking-in-progress further. In the past twenty years or so, we have seen an information explosion the effects of which are all too familiar these days. That so much …
Mirror, M1rr0r
Data visualization is no longer news. We’re well past talking about the “tsunami of data crashing upon our shores” and the staggering zettabytes and yottabytes of data we’re capable of generating. Everybody knows we’re visual creatures and that visualizations are like an express lane for information to get into our heads. We get it. There is no longer the need for …