Jer Thorp, a data artist in residence at The New York Times, shows off some of his work (like this and this) and speaks about the connection between the real world and the mechanical bits we know as data. Worth your 17 minutes.
People often miss this point about data — that it’s a representation of the physical world — and because of that, things like uncertainty and complexity come attached to the numbers. There are also actual human beings associated with a lot of data. So while optimization, maximization, and efficiency are well and good, stories, ethics, and lessons are pretty good takeaways, too.
Update: Don’t miss the unexpected discussion around data and capitalism.
Ah, he’s behind OpenPaths? I’m using OpenPaths now to gather data for a future project to be located here: http://david.dlma.com/location/ . What’s there now already uses OpenPaths, as a proof-of-concept, but isn’t what the final product is meant to be.
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