The Beauty of Data Visualization

Another post taken from my Database Searching class, here is David Candless on the beauty of data visualization:

Shh! Sound Health in 8 Steps

Look, a tangent! Sort of. Anything with the word 'shh' in the title attracts my proto-librarian interest.



Another talk by Julian Treasure: The 4 Ways Sound Affects Us.

As much as libraries are moving toward being active, non-silent areas, we should still appreciate silence - it allows us to be more productive. Sometimes - like yesterday - I'll find myself weirdly sensitive to sound and it quite honestly makes me feel awful. Chatty classroom environments are terrible for it. Sadly, moving away from the sound isn't so much an option in a classroom, unless I want to duck in and out of the door as the instructor speaks. It only happens every so often, but I do feel physically ill when it does. I wonder how common that is.

The Power of the Single Story

A TED talk from Chimamanda Adichie about how limiting a single story of a place or person can be and the importance of noting similarities between people instead of just presenting the negative differences. There's a super awesome part about reading 'American Psycho'.

TED Talk: 4Chan

The virtues (and downfalls) of anonymity on the internet. Mostly I like the Dusty story.

Stephen Wolfram - Making All Knowledge Computational

Stephen Wolfram talks about his ideas to make all knowledge computational. I'll be honest, a lot of it goes right over my head, but it's worth watching. Stephen Wolfram designed Wolfram Alpha, a curious little search engine that provides very up to date computational facts.

Harry Potter, Freedom of Speech, and Failure

JK Rowling gave a commencement speech at Harvard University about the fringe benefits of failure. You can also watch it here:

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

I thought one of the most interesting parts was when Rowling spoke of the time she worked at Amnesty International's headquarters in London:

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard, and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.

Mister Splashy Pants For the Win

This is a TED talk from one of the guys who created Reddit about how social media online can be very cool... as long as you're okay with the possibility of losing control.

Jimmy Wales' Wikipedia TED Talk

Jimmy Wales is the creator of Wikipedia - or at least the base concept. In this 2005 TED talk, he talks about how Wikipedia came to be, how it operates, and how many people the non-profit organization WikiMedia employs: one. He's the lead software developer and he's only been employed there since January 2005. Everyone else is a volunteer, a random person on the internet who contributes simply because they care.

Also noteworthy: Jonathan Zittrain's TED Talk 'The Web as Random Acts of Kindness'. The Wikipedia content starts at around 9:15, but it's all good.