Before we do anything I’d like you to
imagine a timeline of your life, all the great moments from birth to now that
make up your experiences. Look at that, you’ve just used visualisation! This
week, we’re focusing on data and information visualisation and its mission of discovering the unknown by making the invisible visible. What? I know!
How awesome does that sound? But what exactly is it? Let's make a character
profile…
Name: Visualisation (Data and
Information)
Definition: a specific type of visual
register that exploits our capacity for pattern recognition
Purpose: to discern and establish
relationships you haven’t seen before
Method: using images to draw from data
to structure new relationships and new forms of knowledge
Agent number: 006 (because I think if
Visualisation was a secret agent it would beat James Bond)
- Visualisation and Examples -
Visualisation
is the second main aspect of modes of publishing and is a great visible way to
understand how archives are used to create forms of content and expression – to
communicate large amounts of knowledge into an easy to read diagram (Newsom and
Haynes, 2004). This newfound information has all kinds of impacts as all kinds
of arguments are conducted through information graphics. Think about Al Gore
and his famous Inconvenient Truth
(2006). He uses visualisation all the way from describing global warming with
pictures to graphs showing what we as citizens on the Earth are doing about it.
What our governments are doing about it. Through information aesthetics to
better help us understand out situation, Al Gore helped bring us closer to open
governance by picturing climate change – and I mean ‘picture’-ing in every
sense of the word. Visualisation has even helped understand public health, for
example Dr. John Snow’s use of visualisation as a method in his famous cholera
map. Here, he was able to see, through analysing the patterns of deaths and
seeing an increase around a particular water pump, that cholera is waterborne
and not airborne.
Visualisation
shows us the permeating wireless connectivity of our lives – lives now
connected through media, publics and publishing. It helps us sort through the
exponential bombardment of information in our lives as we continue to bathe in
archive fever. Visualisation thus incorporates into a nexus with archive fever,
publishing, and control. Control being the notion that if it is seen, is it
then controllable? This mire of concepts opens a whole other discussion that I
don’t have space for in this blog, but will definitely be discussed in my
upcoming Visualisation Project!
- Wikileaks -
This falls right into the debate on the disclosure of data and information in
the news – should it all be available for free? ALL of it? For FREE? And even
if it should, would it? A good example for this debate is Wikileaks – all about
freedom, speech, and equality. They strive to abide by these values by exposing
to citizens information the Government would rather hide. They thus hold the
power to force institutions to also abide by these values. Ackerman (2010)
includes that “without information you cannot make informed decisions as a public.”
Albeit this argument, Seaman (2010) states that “at the end of the day, society
has more right to keep its secrets secret, than does Wikileaks have a right to
wreak havoc and keep its sources hidden while doing so.” He suggests that,
fundamentally, the mass corporations are what make up society, and, in an age
where too much information can hurt, sometimes secrets need to be kept.
- Disclosure of Information: Control -
This
brings to light the ambiguous nature of how much information we as publishers
(both amateur and professional) should convey. Just because it’s true, does
that mean we HAVE to tell every single detail? (Control, we are always fighting
for control.) Moreover, how do we even know it’s true? Visualisation, for
instance, depends on the variable collected to determine what is seen. Yet, how
do we know the variables collected are the right ones? If so, are they accurate,
and how selective is the information they give? The fact that we cannot firmly
know the accuracy of information lends us reason to question its utility –
whether information is always beneficial or perhaps harmful instead. I think we
need a balance of information and choice, and yes, information should
absolutely be free and available so that we can make properly informed
decisions. However, there is a limit to the type of information we have, as
good as it is to know, it is inevitable that we as the masses require an
element of control so that the economy functions. In this day and age,
information is power, and therefore control. Publics are constantly pulling
information in different directions in hopes to gain this control, and it is
ambiguous just how much information society and institutions should share and
keep to ourselves – but that doesn’t stop us from trying to have it all!
References:
Ackerman, B., 2010, “Bradley Manning’s Inhuman Treatment,” CIF America, Apr11, accessed 24/04/2013 <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/apr/11/bradley-manning-julian-assange>
Bender, L., Burns, S., David, L.,
Chilcott, L., Ivers, J. D., Skoll, J., Strauss, R. and Weyermann, D. (Producers),
Guggenheim, D. (Director), 2006, “An Inconvenient Truth,” United States:
Paramount Pictures
Mccandless, D., 2010, “The Beauty of
Data Visualisation,” TEDtalks, Aug 24,
accessed 24/04/2013 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLqjQ55tz-U>
Newsom, D. and Haynes, J.,
2004, Public Relations Writing: Form and Style. p.236
Seaman,
P., 2010, “Why Wikileaks Is Bad News,” 21st
Century PR Issues, Dec 23, accessed 24/04/2013 <http://paulseaman.eu/2010/12/why-wikileaks-is-bad-news/>
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