Does the idea of 'Making is Connecting' relates to aggregation and distribution?

          This week, there are two important concepts that have been highlighted in the lecture; aggregation and distribution.  In addition, as the technological world is becoming more interconnected and intelligent than ever before, more things become surfaces and platform for publishing (Lecture 11).

           One of the reading for this week draw our attention towards a book entitled ‘ Making is Connecting’, written by David Gauntlett, Professor of Media and Communications at the University of Westminster. In his book, he wrote about three key ideas concerning the reasons of why making /creating something is highly associated with connecting:-

1)      Making is connecting since you have to connect things together (materials, ideas, data)  in order to come up with something new

2)      Making is connecting because creativity involves social interaction and dimension which connect us with other people

3)      Making is connecting because through making things and sharing them at the global scale, we improve  our engagement and connection with our social

                                                                                                              ( Gauntlett, D. 2011, p.2)

             In my opinion, all the ideas are acceptable and can be better explained in relation to things around us, including the process of publishing. A good example to describe these points is the stages involved in publishing a case study or journal articles.

             First of all, researchers have to find relevant information and data in accordance to the research topic. This can be achieved through literature review, interview, questionnaire and other data collection methods. Thus, unrelated materials are linked together and connected to form new meaningful information, which is quite similar to the first point above.  Next, if researchers come up with the idea of investigating a topic that have never been examined before,  he/she have to ask for other people’s viewpoint about the idea. Expertise and scholars in the appropriate field are the best people to give advice and viewpoint. Therefore, researchers have indirectly interacting with epistemic communities around them. After that, when the research is accomplished and research paper have undergo peer review process, it can be published for the benefit of other members of the society. Over recent years, large amounts of case study are available in the internet. In other words, more research papers are being published at global scale, rather than just regional or national level.

              Other than that, the concept of ‘making is connecting’ can be associated with the theory of aggregation and distribution. Aggregation involves the process of gathering, combining, and brings anything that can be clustered together. In addition, a new relationship and new form of organisation can also be established through aggregation. Hence, aggregation is quite comparable to ‘creating ‘and ‘making’. Furthermore, distribution deals with spreading and sharing of materials through different platforms. Nowadays, news and current affair are the most common information that are being distributed, whether by printed or digital media.

              However, in certain cases, publishing of confidential information of a particular organisation could pose harm and danger if the information falls in the hand of wrong people. This is actually one shortcoming of Wikileaks.  Simply put, not all things can be made available to the general public, thus drive the need for data filtering and stricter regulations in distribution of information.  

            Last but not least, this video illustrates the flaws in our current distribution process. Surprisingly, these errors have a significant negative effect towards our environmental wellbeing. 

Reference:

Gauntlett, ,D.  2011, Making is Connecting: The Social Meaning of creativity, from DIY and knitting to YouTube and Web 2.0, Polity Press, pp. 1-14

  

Metadata in publishing

          The connection between bodies, data and publishing are important in data visualisation and distribution or aggregation.  In this case, bodies can be described as the source of data. First of all, data are extracted from a like range of literatures like books, newspaper, government annual report, and case study. Data are also available online from websites and blogs.
         
         The process of finding useful information from a large database is known as data mining (An Introduction to Data Mining 2010).However, it is important to point out here that the sources of information  determine whether the data is reliable or not. It is inappropriate to make a research by based on facts from a personal blog. Government websites such as the Australian Bureau of Statistics is probably the most reliable sources for available online. In the case of published literature, it has to be peer-reviewed by the expertise in the area.

          Then, data are stored in archive. Usually, digital information are often saved in the hard drives of computer, whereas useful hard copies of publications are gathered together and being keep in one place. In this context, digital data can be retrieved easily and more organized compared to its hard copy. However, the soft copy of information is exposed to threat such as virus, malware, and malfunction of drive failure. On top of that, the concept of archive fever suggests that data are being modified and altered frequently. This would eliminate the links between information and eventually loss its meaning.   In addition, hard copies of information are vulnerable to physical risk like fire and termites. The best solution is to keep data in both forms.     

          Next, as various forms of data are assembled together, metadata is formed. Probably one of the important concepts put forward in the lecture this week is metadata. Generally, metadata can be defined as data within data or information about other information. One good explanation about metadata is it describes, explains, locates, and assists in data retrieval, facilitate discovery of relevant information, organize electronic resource, as well as managing information resource (Guenther, R. &Radebaugh, J. 2001).     

          Another point mentioned in the lecture is metadata could produce new forms of expression/content and distribution/aggregation. In this context, metadata generate new systems of visualizing and communicating data to the public. Besides, varieties in the form of expression influence our social engagement with the information being presented. A good example is the representation of information about the threat of rising sea level which can be accessed through this link:-

                http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/when-sea-levels-attack/

This video gives a brief explanation about metadata and its application in business sector. In most cases, we did not realise the application of metadata in simple things around us, which can serve as the base for us to understand this concept.  

References:-

Guenther, R. &Radebaugh, J. 2001, Metadata Made Simpler , A guide for libraries, NGO Press

An Introduction to Data Mining 2010, accessed 11 May 2011 <http://www.thearling.com/text/dmwhite/dmwhite.htm >

Effective and Helpful Data Visualisation

          Over recent years, the process of publishing through various types of media often involves a range of visualisation. The common visuals involves are images, vibrant colours, map, graph, animation and videos. In this case, there need to some balance between design and function. Simple images might be dull and boring, but extremely complex mind map possibly will disregard the element of functionality. On top of that, any form of data visualisation should communicate information clearly and effectively as well as assisting readers to make sense of the data (Friedman 2008 ).

          Most of the reading for this week provides a range of examples of data visualisation regarding the topic of climate change, global warming and the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In this context, these examples prove the idea of overwhelmingly powerful feature of visual experience (Lecture 9). Two specific examples that are appealing and remarkable are visuals and data presented in these websites:-

1)http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/climate-change-deniers-vs-the-consensus/

         This website portrays the issue of global warming from two perspective; The Global Warming Sceptics (Sceptics) and The Scientific Consensus (Believers). A lot of issues and thoughts centred around global warming are analyzed from both parties. In my opinion, analyzing this issue from two different sides provides the reader with a greater and broader scope of the topic. In addition, images, maps, and graphs are utilized in order to assist with the visualisation process by providing the visual aid. 

            However, there are too much data presented in this websites which makes it difficult to for the reader to reach the final conclusion. Even worse, each side put forward reasonable and convincing arguments, together with several facts for each point. In this context, emphasizing important key issues and data will assist the process of communication of information to the reader. 

2)http://co2now.org/

          ‘CO2 Now ‘deals with the rising amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Information about carbon emissions are represented as graphs, series of images, and tempting large fonts. Unlike the previous example, facts and statistics in this website strongly support the believers of rising carbon emissions, and the arguments for the sceptics about this issue are absent. In this case, one of the strength of data visualisation is the use of real images in one of the entry entitled ‘Global Carbon Emission’. Real images may shift individual experiences which he/she have been exposed with man-made graphics and expression for a long period of time.

           On the other hand, some scientific terms used in this websites might not be understandable for people without science background or those that only acquire low educational level. Publishing is about making something public, which must consider the fact that there are different types of people in the society. Not all members of society can interpret information that contains technical jargon. In fact, it must be avoided and replaced with simpler expression.  

         This video demonstrate how geographical data can be presented using ‘ Treemaps’. Treemaps offer a compact data visualisation of large amount of quantitative data. In addition, each unit of data can be assigned with different colours and sizes.

References:-

Friedman , V. 2008, Data Visualisation and Infographics, accessed 5 May 2011  <http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/14/monday-inspiration-data-visualization-and-infographics/ >