The Wit and Wisdom of IDEA2006
from Bruce Stirling
"This is the moment for data visualization! Regular people are paying attention to this sort of thing!"
"What's going on here? All of a sudden we have thousands of people engaging in data analysis!"
"For the infoviz community, sensemaking is becoming a big deal."
"We know we can't control the end result -- but we know that we can stimulate activity."
"It's not a weight-loss program! Don't feel guilty about using these things!"
"How many archaeologists in the room? One archaeologist! That's my girlfriend."
"We did a whole fake festival in Second Life to go with the real festival, and as your avatar approached the stage, it inherited new dance moves."
"Metatags, collaborative filtering, GIS; if those work on the Web, why not in a museum?"
"On opening day, they had a beautiful exhibition -- with no content. We designed a process that created an exhibition."
"The touchpoints were less than satisfactory."
"People spend whole days of their lives on the phone, dealing with billings... It's just an incredibly arduous experience."
"There's something about being in front of the illuminated glass surface that turns part of my mind off."
"To be connected is to be alive, to be recognized, to matter, to be in an artificial sense of constant crisis..."
"'Technological excise'... those are the technical things we force people to do, that people don't actually want to do."
"There's a lot to be said for what we have -- and even more for what we have, that we're not using."
"If it's just easy-to-use, it won't rise above-the-noise."
"Seattle is the smartest and readingest city in the country."
"I quiver at the concept that libraries were ever considered stodgy, dusty places for books."
"It's a kind of heat-map around the country that shows how interested people are."
"Libraries are trying to create an interesting physical-virtual bridge."
"We have to give the public credit for being interested in what is interesting."
"How do we deal with an explosion of choice? I'm going to do that through a series of incredibly tenuous metaphors."
"Email isn't a tiger! Email is like a cloud of flies."
"I like to think of data as a big block of tofu... on its own, it's devoid of all substance."
"I'm not sure how to describe that development process. It's like a potter playing with clay."
"I click on this, and it takes me to a sandbox where I can play with the data."
"It's the simplest, easiest, dorkiest thing in the world, but half a million people are using it."
"Everything that can be located, will be."
"I embarked on this quest to sell polygons..."
"They scrape the Internet, and wherever there's geographical data, they boil stuff down and attach it."
"They've got five hundred tricked-out SUVs that drive the world with positional cameras."
"They're not just using other people's sites, but entire ID schemes and databases."
"They're able to do things I've never seen any library do. LibraryThing moves at the speed of light."
"People will run across a battlefield to spray a DJ's name on a tank."
"Cities are clusters of spatial events. We want to repopulate the map with the rhythms of urban life."
"The centralized cataloging apparatus of the world doesn't have the time."
"We don't do 'directions.' We make datasets and license them for mashups."
"We're thinking about ALL the ways people can vandalize a dataset."
"It's aggregation, attention, centralized portals and massed eyeballs against the wide canvas of the entire Internet."
"Those transmissions that surround us -- they're the Hertzian equivalent of landmark church steeples."
"This is Le Corbusier's Ville Radieuse, which is clearly insane and absolutely beautiful."
"In physical interaction spaces, people will do whatever you say -- if you make it super-clear and super-seamless."
"Want shorter meetings? Install some whiteboards and remove all the chairs!"
"It's not just about the scale and the technique. It's about the experience."
The podcast gives a much better sense of how these should be delivered.
~Niveau
"This is the moment for data visualization! Regular people are paying attention to this sort of thing!"
"What's going on here? All of a sudden we have thousands of people engaging in data analysis!"
"For the infoviz community, sensemaking is becoming a big deal."
"We know we can't control the end result -- but we know that we can stimulate activity."
"It's not a weight-loss program! Don't feel guilty about using these things!"
"How many archaeologists in the room? One archaeologist! That's my girlfriend."
"We did a whole fake festival in Second Life to go with the real festival, and as your avatar approached the stage, it inherited new dance moves."
"Metatags, collaborative filtering, GIS; if those work on the Web, why not in a museum?"
"On opening day, they had a beautiful exhibition -- with no content. We designed a process that created an exhibition."
"The touchpoints were less than satisfactory."
"People spend whole days of their lives on the phone, dealing with billings... It's just an incredibly arduous experience."
"There's something about being in front of the illuminated glass surface that turns part of my mind off."
"To be connected is to be alive, to be recognized, to matter, to be in an artificial sense of constant crisis..."
"'Technological excise'... those are the technical things we force people to do, that people don't actually want to do."
"There's a lot to be said for what we have -- and even more for what we have, that we're not using."
"If it's just easy-to-use, it won't rise above-the-noise."
"Seattle is the smartest and readingest city in the country."
"I quiver at the concept that libraries were ever considered stodgy, dusty places for books."
"It's a kind of heat-map around the country that shows how interested people are."
"Libraries are trying to create an interesting physical-virtual bridge."
"We have to give the public credit for being interested in what is interesting."
"How do we deal with an explosion of choice? I'm going to do that through a series of incredibly tenuous metaphors."
"Email isn't a tiger! Email is like a cloud of flies."
"I like to think of data as a big block of tofu... on its own, it's devoid of all substance."
"I'm not sure how to describe that development process. It's like a potter playing with clay."
"I click on this, and it takes me to a sandbox where I can play with the data."
"It's the simplest, easiest, dorkiest thing in the world, but half a million people are using it."
"Everything that can be located, will be."
"I embarked on this quest to sell polygons..."
"They scrape the Internet, and wherever there's geographical data, they boil stuff down and attach it."
"They've got five hundred tricked-out SUVs that drive the world with positional cameras."
"They're not just using other people's sites, but entire ID schemes and databases."
"They're able to do things I've never seen any library do. LibraryThing moves at the speed of light."
"People will run across a battlefield to spray a DJ's name on a tank."
"Cities are clusters of spatial events. We want to repopulate the map with the rhythms of urban life."
"The centralized cataloging apparatus of the world doesn't have the time."
"We don't do 'directions.' We make datasets and license them for mashups."
"We're thinking about ALL the ways people can vandalize a dataset."
"It's aggregation, attention, centralized portals and massed eyeballs against the wide canvas of the entire Internet."
"Those transmissions that surround us -- they're the Hertzian equivalent of landmark church steeples."
"This is Le Corbusier's Ville Radieuse, which is clearly insane and absolutely beautiful."
"In physical interaction spaces, people will do whatever you say -- if you make it super-clear and super-seamless."
"Want shorter meetings? Install some whiteboards and remove all the chairs!"
"It's not just about the scale and the technique. It's about the experience."
The podcast gives a much better sense of how these should be delivered.
~Niveau