I just read this article at readwriteweb today. This is the type of communication data analysis and visualization that I would love to go back to graduate school to do. The use of dynamic visualizations which strip data out of static charts and graphs and the way it will change the patterns in which we think are the future.
The dependency of human reason on the faculty of sight is fundamental. This dependency is acknowledged in the development of graphs in the first place. What these new visualization tools (and, importantly, their creative application toward data) bring to this old system is a better connection with the interdependencies of time/space and data.
As we discussed over the weekend, the limitations of our research tools over time can prejudice what is known, knowable, or, most devastatingly, what is worth knowing. Because, for better or for worse, academics have been judged on their publications, research that did not translate to the print medium was simply irrelevant. If you can't get it published, it can't help you, so move on.
As McLuhan suggests, it is the medium of expression that dictates the content of the expression (and the epistemological limits of the thought behind the expression). In this case, the static nature of printed publications creates a snapshot mindset. It over-weights the value of an event description at a point in time. If a researcher discovers information that changes their perspective on something they wrote, they do not rewrite or update the existing work, they leave it intact and create another work over the top of it.
This static limitation of print has also affected our understanding of events as depicted in charts and graphs. Since the printed text can not accurately display transition states, researchers were forced to represent them instead as moments in time. This sacrifices part of what is knowable to what is representable and it engenders, over time, a false sense of completeness to the research which is presented.
The philosopher Zeno (500 BCE-ish) famously denied the existence of motion by demonstrating that as an arrow is actually continually at rest if its flight is viewed as individual moments, because in each of these moments, the arrow remains unchanged in it's dimensions in space. This research approach may give us plenty of useful information about the arrow such as the type of tip, the size, and general construction, but it denies access to crucial pieces of information about the arrow--namely where it came from and to whom is it headed.
With regard to the arrow, we can easily derride Zeno's logic as too narrowly focused to be useful. Unfortunately, the utility of this same approach applied to academic research which is chained to the static medium is much harder to dislodge.
The availability of computers to build dynamic data simulations coupled with a mutable medium like the internet represents a new paradigm in research. In the same way that the old system definied the limits of academic thought, this new system could open the way for much broader mindset which has access to tools that can model the world in terms that are truer to the way it functions.
But to gain this freedom, researchers will have to access these new tools. Unfortunately, academics are slow to change; in part because the university system is structured such that each new product is largely a copy of a master stored in their tenured faculty (who was, in turn, a copy of another master). These copies are made (warts and all) and inserted back into the machine to mint "new" copies of their own.
The problem is finding academics who can speak the new languages. When i read articles like the one linked here, I feel like there may be a place in academia for me. (yeah yeah, now i just have to finish my thesis).
Anyway, if you made it this far in my rant. I thank you for participating. Expression is an important part of the thought process and it is helpful to me to have a destination to drive the process.
now get back to work! :)
rc
The dependency of human reason on the faculty of sight is fundamental. This dependency is acknowledged in the development of graphs in the first place. What these new visualization tools (and, importantly, their creative application toward data) bring to this old system is a better connection with the interdependencies of time/space and data.
As we discussed over the weekend, the limitations of our research tools over time can prejudice what is known, knowable, or, most devastatingly, what is worth knowing. Because, for better or for worse, academics have been judged on their publications, research that did not translate to the print medium was simply irrelevant. If you can't get it published, it can't help you, so move on.
As McLuhan suggests, it is the medium of expression that dictates the content of the expression (and the epistemological limits of the thought behind the expression). In this case, the static nature of printed publications creates a snapshot mindset. It over-weights the value of an event description at a point in time. If a researcher discovers information that changes their perspective on something they wrote, they do not rewrite or update the existing work, they leave it intact and create another work over the top of it.
This static limitation of print has also affected our understanding of events as depicted in charts and graphs. Since the printed text can not accurately display transition states, researchers were forced to represent them instead as moments in time. This sacrifices part of what is knowable to what is representable and it engenders, over time, a false sense of completeness to the research which is presented.
The philosopher Zeno (500 BCE-ish) famously denied the existence of motion by demonstrating that as an arrow is actually continually at rest if its flight is viewed as individual moments, because in each of these moments, the arrow remains unchanged in it's dimensions in space. This research approach may give us plenty of useful information about the arrow such as the type of tip, the size, and general construction, but it denies access to crucial pieces of information about the arrow--namely where it came from and to whom is it headed.
With regard to the arrow, we can easily derride Zeno's logic as too narrowly focused to be useful. Unfortunately, the utility of this same approach applied to academic research which is chained to the static medium is much harder to dislodge.
The availability of computers to build dynamic data simulations coupled with a mutable medium like the internet represents a new paradigm in research. In the same way that the old system definied the limits of academic thought, this new system could open the way for much broader mindset which has access to tools that can model the world in terms that are truer to the way it functions.
But to gain this freedom, researchers will have to access these new tools. Unfortunately, academics are slow to change; in part because the university system is structured such that each new product is largely a copy of a master stored in their tenured faculty (who was, in turn, a copy of another master). These copies are made (warts and all) and inserted back into the machine to mint "new" copies of their own.
The problem is finding academics who can speak the new languages. When i read articles like the one linked here, I feel like there may be a place in academia for me. (yeah yeah, now i just have to finish my thesis).
Anyway, if you made it this far in my rant. I thank you for participating. Expression is an important part of the thought process and it is helpful to me to have a destination to drive the process.
now get back to work! :)
rc
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