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 …
Tag: culture
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 …
An Accessible Future
What will the future of information design look like? Often, technology rises up to propose the answer: better software and analytic tools, more sophisticated visual forms, ubiquitous touchscreen-based and virtual information environments, immediate data and information access anywhere. Sci-fi fantasy made real seems an appealing prospect to some, and technology has fast been catching up: it’s only a matter …
The Future of Design History
The future is so now. Everywhere you turn, there’s some book, blog post, or conference about “THE FUTURE OF something-or-other” these days. The faster tech progress moves, the more impatient people become for the next new thing. There’s certainly nothing wrong with envisioning the future and imagining possibilities for what could be. Meaningful progress depends on it. But there …
Understanding, Fast and Slow
Have you ever felt like the only person in the room who didn’t get something? And you felt too embarrassed to ask for an explanation? Maybe it was in a classroom or business meeting or a social gathering where everyone was vigorously nodding in agreement, chuckling at an inside joke, or jumping to the next topic of …