• "On my way home from FOO I sat staring out the car window, all of these impressions, ideas, and seeming contradictions bouncing around in my head. And then something occurred to me. O’Reilly’s human-centered approach is still a kind of systems thinking. O’Reilly is still building a model of what the geek world is working on. They’re just doing it through the social relationships that their employees form with other geeks. The “data” they gather is stored in their employees heads and hearts and in those of the wider community of geeks they bring to events like FOO. Instead of trying to live in the model, O’Reilly tries to live in the community."
    (tags: data oreilly community systems networks cybernetics gregborenstein )
  • "The recent generation of young turks is doubtless having fun with data scrawling but at some point it will pass people by unless there is a purpose or utility to it. They've got the engagement sorted. These things are mostly usable. What they are not is useful.

    That is where people like Few come in. They work in analytics – using data for decision making. They are ideal real-life mentors, solving real life problems. They can point the way to thinking of these apps as tools for whatever outcomes." Max is right – it's a great blog. Good spot.

    (tags: data visualisation informatics information stephenfew blog )
  • Ooh – a local luthier. My electric is in need of a set-up, so good to know there's someone local who comes recommended.
    (tags: se15 luthier guitars repair )
  • "The ways in which people interact with computation are changing swiftly as we move into more casual relationships with our digital services on tablets, big screens, and across social networks. We believe we have some compelling answers about how digital experiences will evolve into these new contexts. Please, follow along with us and explore these playful, dynamic instruments of discovery together." These guys are going to be worth keeping a very beady eye on; what a team.
    (tags: bloom visualisation information data design friends )
  • "I have been an avid gamer since the advent of Pong in 1972. At their best, videogames strike me as a form of art. Like all art, they can augment outer reality and shape our inner reality—but they do this by the very nature of the fact that they are not reality but a Place Apart. Being awestruck at "Halo" does not entail awe any more than "grieving" for Cordelia entails grief. Rather, art at its most serious is a sort of exercise, a formative practice for life—like meditation, only more fun." WSJ review of Reality is Broken; negative, but acute.
    (tags: games books review realityisbroken wallstreetjournal art )

The Story of a Lost Bomber

23 January 2011

It was History Hack Day this weekend. My friend Ben Griffiths scraped the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s register to try to contextualise the death of his great-uncle in World War II.

Before you read on, please do read his story. It’s worth your time.

Ben’s hack is intelligent and, as ever, he explains it with precision and grace. But really, it wasn’t the hack I wanted to draw to your attention; it was the story he tells.

Like many hacks at such events, it begins with a data, scraped or ingested, and Ben’s plotted it over time, marking the categories his great-uncle is represented by.

But data over time isn’t a story; it’s just data over time. A graph; or, if you like, a plot. What makes it a story? A storyteller; someone to intervene, to show you what lies between the points, what hangs off that skeleton. Someone to write narrative – or, in Ben’s case, to relate history, both world and personal.

I’m left, after all this, thinking of just how young these bomber boys were. Looking at this data has been a much more moving exercise than I was expecting.

I found it very affecting, too, but not just because I was looking at the data: I was looking at it through the lens that Ben offered me in the story he told. When you consider it’s the story of one tragic loss amid 12,395 others, you pause, reflect, and try to perhaps comprehend that.

In the end, I couldn’t, entirely, but I tried – and because somebody told me just one story, about one individual, his plane, and his colleagues, I perhaps came closer to an understanding than I otherwise might have. And, because of that, I’m very grateful Ben shared that single story. I’d call that a very worthwhile hack.

posts , , , , ,
  • "Next time somebody's trying to sell you on the awesomeness of their new data technique, ask to see a prototype. If they haven't got that far, it's snake oil." Everything in this article is, basically, true. It's a really good run-down of all the issues that emerge in the reality of dealing with data-driven products at any scale."
    (tags: data prototyping materialexploration software )
  • "I want to love books, but if the publisher treats them merely as interchangeable units, where the details don’t matter so long as the bits, the “content”, is conveyed as cheaply as possible, then we may be falling out of love." Phil buys a new volume of Pepys, finds it's now being printed on-demand, and talks a little about the perceived quality of such books. In short: if you're not expecting it, and it's a change to the usual, it makes you feel a bit like the publisher doesn't care about it.
    (tags: books publishing printondemand philgyford )
  • "This is what the next generation of the mega-selling phone will look like. They'll be rough facsimiles of the high-end smartphones forged for well-heeled buyers, stripped of fat and excess—an embodiment of compromise. They'll be 90% of the phone for 20% of the price, with FM radios instead of digital music stores, and flashlights instead of LED flashes. This is how the other half will smartphone, if you want to be so generous as to call the developing world's users a half. We're not even close." Yes.
    (tags: technology mobile design phones hardware )
  • "Sahel Sounds rounded up music salvaged from the discarded mobile phone memory chips in West Africa." Wow; the after-life of dead electronic media made real.
    (tags: music culture media data storage africa )
  • "Board games are different. Sure, while you might love a board game for the sense of immersion it provides, or the way the game lifts off the table and fills the room, you also might love it for how beautiful the mechanics are. It’s like looking inside a clockwork watch. That fascination, as you see how all the pieces fit together, how everything is timed to perfection, how balanced it all is. With a beautiful board game design, you can love it for that craftsmanship you can feel with every turn." Yup. But, of course: this is, increasingly, why I like any game. It's just much more visible in boardgames – where you have to wrangle the rules yourself. And everything else – the immersion, the involvement – will come too; it just comes from that clockwork heart.
    (tags: games boardgames rules mechanics )
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