Edward Tufte’s Personal Utopia
December 3, 2006
Edward Tufte spoke at Stanford this afternoon and I had the pleasure of being in attendance. It was an unconventional talk, as far as academic lectures go, for Tufte was speaking “in the first person” about his own life: his origins in rural Nebraska, his education and formative years, his mentors who influenced his thinking, and the turning points that signaled moments of profound reorientation. As Tufte noted, for a sample size of N=1, the estimated variance is infinite; so other sources should be consulted.
Tufte has had a remarkable career and speaks as someone who appears to have found the courage to follow his bliss, leaving a tenured professorship at Yale to self-publish his famous books on visual information, go on speaking tours, and make large-scale landscape art in his Connecticut backyard.
There were three big lessons I took away from his talk.
Contribute to forever knowledge.
The most important decision a researcher makes is choosing what problem to focus on. One should choose problems that are not only profoundly important, but ones for which good progress is possible. It’s worth nothing to work on grand problems and make no progress. Tufte’s own compass for this decision: contribute to Forever Knowledge. That is, create knowledge that will be universally useful to humankind in any time or place in human history. Tufte ditched his career as a political economy theorist because he found he was working on only temporarily important problems, things he decided were not worth his “time, energy, passion and mind.”
Be self-exemplifying.
In whatever one’s work, be not only a great communicator of ideas and practices, be an exemplar of those same practices and this will communicate the value of what you are saying far better than anything else. Tufte’s books are not only superb treatises on the visual display of of information, they are also exemplary demonstrations of clear visual communication.
Strive for personal utopia.
Here again, Tufte is, as he presents it, self-exemplifying. While utopian states may be unreachable, you can pretty well approximate an ideal life through clarity of purpose, courage to act on that purpose, and, most importantly, doing what you love.
The poem Tufte opened his talk with was excerpted from T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, fitting for a self-reflection.
Posted by Daniel in : Personal, Science Culture, VisualizationTime present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
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Kama Sutra of information graphics
December 2, 2006
This is a 1728 Geometry text.
Geometry was the network science of its day, with its richly visual mathematical aesthetic. This is the sort of beautiful abstraction that would drive someone to spend years of life teasing out the endless permutations of a set of axioms. 1728 was the height of the Age of Enlightenment, long before Godel came and tread on the dreams of the humble mathematical ascetic.
Today, researchers of all stripes learn an unspoken rule: beautiful visualization of data makes for “sexy” science. In other words, cool information graphics lead to tenure. It’s partly because visual communication is simply more compelling and has a wider mass appeal. That’s why networks research shows up in the New York times: because it has sexy graphics, not because it’s going to catch terrorists.
It’s no wonder that someone like Edward Tufte, an authority on the visual display of quantitative information, is a kind of cult hero. His books are the Kama Sutra of information graphics.
Posted by Daniel in : Networks, Science Culture, Visualization1 comment so far
Our dwindling connection
December 1, 2006
A recent study using data from the 2004 “General Social Survey,” reports that
“Americans have one third fewer close friends and confidants than two decades ago, and the number of people who have none has more than doubled.”
Are Americans more disconnected now than they were twenty years ago? Have they retreated into their selves? (or their cells? (or their cell ph.s?)) Has the connection dwindled? We know people can and do form intense and authentic emotional bonds over digital media like IRC, the web and World of Warcrack. Have the close confidants of a large segment of the population (teens and younger, mostly) moved to a “virtual” category that didn’t have a bubble on the General Social Survey?
Probably.
While the data showed a drop in confidants who are friends or who are family members, there was a far greater drop-off in friends. So close friendships are dwindling — or is it consolidating? All we know is: networks of trust and kinship have grown more sparse.
What are the ramifications of such dramatic social change? Bradley Heinz suggests
We’re becoming more self-referential by relying more on family. In our growing isolation, I see a genetic analogy: our waning social exposure is like inbreeding…
To take the analogy further, fewer social contacts equal a reduced mutation rate of family belief and value systems. Children more closely resemble their parents sociologically. Back into the family fold.
But if the real reason for this anomaly in the GSS data is due to the rise of virtual confidantes, then the mutation rate might actually be on the rise due to globally expanded social exposure. Children raised from birth with internet access whisper secrets into ears thousands of miles away.
So where do you fall? Who and where are your confidants?
Posted by Daniel in : Networks, Research, Society, Technology1 comment so far
