Data Culture- Exploring Different Levels of Flight Data Visualization

Manovich references an infovis classic called Flight Patterns, which “uses numerical data about the flight schedules and trajectories of all planes that fly over the United States to create an animated map which displays the pattern formed by their movement over a 24-hour period”. The result is extremely aesthetically pleasing and simply illustrates the volume and relative pattern of air traffic in a given day, however, it lacks substance. This loss of substance to create something that creates a visual representation of data is the concept of reduction.

 

Flight Patterns

 

For those desiring to know anything more about the flights, Flight Patterns can no longer be of assistance. The principle of reduction “throws away 99 per cent of what is specific about each object to represent only 1 per cent- in the hope of revealing patterns across this 1 per cent of object’s characteristics” (Manovich 38). Reduction is a data tool used to represent the parts of the data the user finds the most useful.

A different approach made possible by modern technology is FlightAware, a website that allows real time tracking and Air Traffic Control data on a similar interface. Though it is far less aesthetically pleasing, it enables users with a more advanced understanding of the subject to dig deeper into the movement of aircraft across the world. This gives a more holistic view of the data because it does not reduce as much as Flight Patterns.

 

FlightAware

 

Despite the impressive difference between the two sites, neither one is objectively superior. These two sites create a fascinating study between a creator’s choice to display more or less data, and the graphics they use to display that data. The choices the creators make regarding these displays can be tailored to create the most effective product for their intended audience. Flight Patterns is simple yet beautiful and provides a stunning image for the casual user, whereas FlightAware provides a more functional yet less visually pleasing interface for the advanced user.

Data Culture- Big Data and the Super Panopticon Reaction

Our in-class discussion today enlightened us to the possibilities of the super panopticon in databases. The panopticon is an idea that plays on the ignorance of the common man. At the core of Foucault’s idea of a disciplinary society seemed to be hierarchical observation, normalizing judgment, and analysis upon after examination. A distinctive feature and primary function of disciplinary society as a result of these characteristics were to correct deviant behavior. Foucault’s connection to John Bentham’s Panopticon and the disciplined society also connects to today’s regulated online behavior.

The Panopticon was a cylinder jail with a tower in the middle from which a guard could see and not be seen by all the prisoners in the jail cells that surround the tower. It was the ideal diagram of disciplined power because it minimized the amount of guards needed to watch and maximized the number of prisoners that could be watched. It was highly efficient because it gave the power of mind over mind because the prisoner believed they were always being watched thus causing them to self-check and regulate themselves to the laws of the prison. This created a moral compass of sorts by which each prisoner abided, depending on his belief of how closely he was being watched, but in general it created reform and a general conformity to one moral compass. This parallels today’s society with regards to how people use the internet, a series of databases. Some people are hyper sensitive about their data and use Virtual private networks to hide their data while others freely use Google, not caring about who is watching. Data is the guard that shapes our daily behavior- regardless of whether someone is watching a person’s interactions with online databases, we modify our online behavior as if someone is actually using our data.

Data Culture Group 6 (Response

Data itself is incredibly important to us as a society with virtually everything from medical records to banking records being computerized and even automated. As group 5 discusses in their post: “More data allows for more sophisticated data-processing, which in turn creates an increasingly automated society.” We found this point interesting as well as the point about there being a time when there is too much data for us to be able to store.  We believe that this is possible because data itself is not something that has to be built. Inevitably, there will come a time when the amount of data itself will overrun the space that we have available to store such data.  Reflecting on Group 1’s statement that as new data arises, new problems also arise, such as how to navigate and store the data, we would predict that the “constant string of innovation from data” will actually produce more data, continuing its exponential growth and heightening the challenges of storage.

 

We discussed in class the panopticon and the super-panopticon as well as government surveillance.  There seems to be a sort of metaphor in what we were talking about.  We in essence are inside this panopticon when it comes to government surveillance because we never really know if the government is tracking us and if they are storing our data. This poses new challenges but also provides us with more avenues in which we and the government can use this data.  Such avenues as Artificial Intelligence could help make finding data faster and more efficient, but could they evolve into something that we do not yet understand or cannot control?

 

Another interesting point that was mentioned in class was the video in which there was an interview talking about how fast computers have evolved.  We have gone from computers the size of rooms to our phone which is virtually a computer that we can fit in our pocket.  Will there come a time when the growth of computers that we have seen in the past 100 or so years will plateau, or can the technology surrounding computing keep up?

Data Culture: Group 5, Post 1

The complexity of our everyday life poses an unlimited number of questions to humans who are trying to navigate their realities. In order to make sense out of the complexity that surrounds us on any given day, we started to record the ever-present information of our realities in form of data – providing invisible clues to help us to make sense out of our realities. Data has also changed the way in which we record history, with the creation of the “timeline”, such as in the A New Chart of History and A Chart of Biography.

 

It is fascinating how the digital revolution, propelled by databases and data-processing machines, completely changed the nature of human society. Nowadays, the internet serves as a social space that entirely disregards geographical separation and has the ability to foster human values rather than local values, which effortlessly transcend borders, cultures and even languages. Hence, it is apparent that the quest for greater amounts of data has only just begun. This is especially clear in Stephen Fortune’s “A Brief History of Databases” with his discussion of increasing transaction volume data from online commerce. As Fortune asks, will the amount of data continue to grow to a point that a shift to NoSQL architecture would be necessary? Will the amount of data one day become too great for any system of databases to hold?

 

More data allows for more sophisticated data-processing, which in turn creates an increasingly automated society. With data being in tremendously high demand, we can expect data-processing machines to follow suit in their level of sophistication. The basic idea of a machine that can perform multiple tasks has been around since the mid 1800’s, but the first computers were not created until much later. From 1910 to the mid-1960’s, tabulators and punch cards used to be the state-of-the-art technology. Due to their (at that time) efficiency in storing information and effectiveness in navigating our realities, the demand for more complex databases and machines has since skyrocketed. We cannot necessarily, therefore, expect this trend to stop anytime soon. Data has made tabulators expendable and could continue to grow to different sectors, including new developments like: self-driving Ubers, grocery delivering drones, and IBM’s Watson.

 

 

Page 23 of “Data Before The Fact” – Daniel Rosenberg

Data Culture: Group 1, Post 1

We found that Rosenberg’s “Data before the Fact” was quite similar to “Information: Notes Toward a Critical History”, which we read for last week.  It discussed the history of the meaning of the word “data” and how it has changed over time.  One interesting part of this reading was on page 18 when Rosenberg discussed the word data compared to the words “fact” and “evidence.”  These are words that we may use similarly in the English language, however they have significantly different meanings.  We have one question from this reading as well: What does Rosenberg mean when he says “in the eighteenth century, ‘data’ was still a term of art”?

In the article “A Brief History of Databases”, Fortune discusses the industrialization of computers and data storage.  As new things are being invented, more questions come up.  New data is arising, but new problems to arise such as how to navigate this data and where to store it, etc.  There is a constant string of innovation from data.

We were also intrigued by the idea of the panopticon and the super-panopticon.  The panopticon deals with a single entity being watched over whereas the super-panopticon discusses this idea but on a much larger scale – we would describe it as a never ending machinery system of surveillance.  Poster compares the data of each individual user to that person being in jail.  This is a shocking yet realistic comparison that we all agreed we had never thought of before.  We did not really understand the part where Poster writes “For although surveillance rests on the individual, its functioning is that of a network of relations from top to bottom… and laterally… this network holds the whole together and traverses it in its entirety with effects of power that derive from one another…”  What is the network of relations from top to bottom and laterally?