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It’s all fun and games
Ben Fry is a genius.
In case you haven’t heard of him, he’s a doctoral candidate at MIT who specializes in creating innovative ways to visualize information. If you have an hour free, I urge you to go to his web site and check out virtually everything there. A few of my favorites:
An enormous poster showing the software code for the original Super Mario Bros. video game, with delicate flow-chart arrows swooping around illustrating how the code worked.
An interactive map of the US that shows you how zip codes work. You type in a zip code number by number, and as you add each digit, it shows you the part of the country you’re slowly narrowing down to.
“Tendril”, an application that takes content from web sites and displays it as gorgeous 3D sculptures floating in a Matrix-like null space.
A ghostly poster that uses the president’s announcement of the imminent invasion of Iraq to try and illustrate the casualties it would cause.
This guy’s work is an elegant illustration of Edward Tufte’s argument: That in a world where we are increasingly asked to parse and manipulate huge amounts of inscrutable data, we need increasingly innovative ways to visualize it. Visualizing information can have a political effect, as with the Bush-war poster. Or it can simply be a way of making the intangible suddenly visible — as with that breathtaking flow chart of how the Super Mario code works. Either way, when it’s done well, it’s damn cool, and I’ve rarely seen it done better.
(Thanks to Jonathan Korman for finding this one!)
I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.
Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!
The “Milky Way Transit Authority” map
Should automobile software be open-sourced?
My Bookforum review of Jaron Lanier’s “You Are Not A Gadget”
Molecular secrets of the “iron-plated snail”
» visit the Collision Detection archives
January 31, 2010 » 07:29 PM
V. A. To me death seems to be an evil.
M. What, to those who are already dead? or to those who must die?
A. To both.
M. It is a misery, then, because an evil?
A. Certainly.
M. Then those who have already died, and those who have still got to die, are both miserable?
A. So it appears to me.
M. Then all are miserable?
A. Every one.
January 24, 2010 » 03:22 PM
One of the more interesting trends is family, which came in at number five. Specifically, discussion about family, moms, dads, daughters, etc. jumped during 2009. With Facebook users getting older, this isn’t a big surprise. However, the fact that the mention of “kids” jumped by a factor of five this year is rather dramatic. It’s tough to know what this means, though. (via Facebook Unveils Most-Mentioned Topics of 2009
)
January 15, 2010 » 01:36 PM
BEYOND AWESOME. They are announcing a recall of the Plush Uterus “due to a potential choking hazard for children”. To apply for it, “Please send an email to the address below with the subject line, ‘UTERUS OPT OUT’”.
January 14, 2010 » 10:04 PM
“To order, please TYPE “YES” IN CHECKBOX BELOW TO AGREE YOU UNDERSTAND THIS PLUSH MUST BE KEPT AWAY FROM KIDS (it is a sex organ, after all). If it is not checked, WE WILL NOT SEND THE UTERUS.” (via @ibogost)
January 11, 2010 » 01:45 PM
I watched Space: 1999 back in the day, but I swear to god I do not remember this scene.
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