“Above all else show the data.”
Edward Tufte
DATA, a plural Latin word from the verb dare meaning to give, is what already exists. Data is what is given to us. Contrary to the marketed script, there can be no data from the future, simply because the future is not given. The future’s data hasn’t happened yet, and predictive analytics is merely that, a prediction with all the charm and fragility of a crystal ball. But just because data has been given to us does not mean we have taken it. Data is largely given – today in unimaginable quantity – but is, as yet, unreceived. We tell ourselves we are data-driven, but that too is part of the script and we are still driving the car manually, decision by manual decision.
Decision is also a Latin word, and it does not mean what we think it means. It does not mean to select. Literally, to decide means to cut away – to deselect. You have to know what to leave out to make the right decision, and - as Peter Drucker reminds us – strategy consists of knowing what not to do. If we ignore the vast bulk of the data flooding our systems every day and continue to take decisions based on precedent, habit, inertia, guesswork, group think and hierarchy, it is small wonder the world finds itself in such turmoil.
These two facts – the fact that data has been given but remains untaken, and the fact that decisions are still essentially all too human and cut up instead of ‘cut away’ – form the premise of this last act in the spatial realm. Data is the final frontier of our inner space because we use it or are supposed to use it to function in all the other dimensions we live alongside including people, products and places. Data is not the solution here but the problem because we are ignoring it and have instead created a new cult of analysts, scientists and architects to tell us what it means. It is so germane to our lives we had to initiate a whole new profession and industry to interpret it. Only the interpreters are not us – and we make the decisions, those decisions based on precedent.
The literature on immersive data using holograms remains sparse, which is telling you something about it. We literally can’t imagine what that would look like yet. But data visualization – the spearhead of the analytics industry – has its limits, its drawbacks and its blind spots. Yes, we know that visual trumps verbal, and that the thalamus processes visual while we need a troublesome frontal cortex to interpret the verbal data story for us. Visual is better than verbal because it’s miles faster and many times more complex which aids pattern recognition. But what are the disadvantages of visual?
“Sooner or later, someone will dramatize the inner space of decision making by sharing holographic episodes.”
For a start, you have to look at it. If you don’t look at your data visualization it can be as appealing as Da Vinci or Botticelli but all for naught. And when you look at it your mind has a tendency to wander. Color, for one, is a highly subjective and cultural commodity. Change the color scheme and you may influence vastly different next decisions. And does the color scheme at present even have a logic or semantic value at all? Visualization in two dimensions is limited to a left-right, top-down paradigm which again is culturally limited and influential far beyond the objective premise of data. When you are looking at visuals, they are looking at you – and the structure and sequence of their data has been set up by someone who is not you and who thinks differently.
Height and width deny depth and imply neat conclusions. Height and width alone box you in. It’s hard to explore context and background without depth. Your data may be smart but is it deep? Can you touch the data? Can you grasp what has been given to you?
Data visualization has now received years of massive investment and forms the vanguard of the data analytics industry. Its dashboards are everywhere, again enhancing the data-driven automotive metaphor. But hey, last time I looked the car industry too was being disrupted. Are we driving the car or being driven?
Visualization is the condition of cinema, television and the internet. It is a flatscreen technology essentially. And just as cinema, television and the internet are not the real world, neither is data visualization. For reality is primarily spatial. We have bodies and we move about in space. We interpret our lives proximately. How near and how far things and other people are from us matters. Distance and proximity are not the same. At present all the data is equidistant from us, everything is a long shot, a crude pattern on the horizon somewhere.
What if you could take what is given to you?
What if you could not only take it but re-imagine it?
Data means different things to different people. The same data means different things to the same people at different times. Data has a contour and a context. Data is a dynamic property that loses its agency on the flat. Just as holography can enrich the lives of people, dramatize the lives of products and bring out the richness of chosen places, holograms have something to add to the secret and almost wholly ignored life of data.
The data life cycle goes something like this – raw unstructured data is cleaned and brought into relation with structured and processed data. This processed data is scoured for hidden patterns and investigated by algorithms (with all their human foibles too) and the results are presented to ‘the business’ as actionable insights. The word actionable is another charming term of the new industry and means essentially nothing. One is always able to take action, or not. To imply that insights can enable action to be taken is a charming condescension to the human animal, akin to us being ‘offline’ when in fact we are the ones in the real world. There is nothing off about being out and about in the real world, just as there is nothing actionable about insight. Many insights are reflective, educational even and are not meant to incite action. Decisions are not composed purely of actions in any case. Many of the world’s best decisions consisted of doing nothing at all. But I digress. This data cycle provides actionable insights. To whom? The business. In other words, the decision makers in the real world. But who designed the cycle, who investigated it and who defined the action?
Data immersion is not a new science on top of data visualization – it is not a new sect on top of a cult. The premise of data immersion is to return the data to the owners and generators of the given information. The decision makers are the ones best equipped to explore. If you could have a direct conversation with your data, wouldn’t you listen very carefully to what it’s saying? It’s time to disintermediate the analytics industry already before it turns into accountancy, statistics or economics. It’s time for your business to own its data.
The spatial realm connects people, products, places and data in a narrative continuum. Data is the most ethereal and metaphysical component in this emerging ecosystem. But it is also the most promising because the decisions that are fed by data affect everything else. Right now, we have a trick of the eye, a visualization layer that is embedding dashboards everywhere without necessarily capturing the knowledge or evolving the actual way we still make decisions based on old behavior.
Transforming data into an experience using narrative holograms is a possibility becoming a probability. Sooner or later, someone will dramatize the inner space of decision making by sharing holographic episodes. They will enact not only the choices to be made and the problems to be solved but also the opportunity costs of those choices and the complications behind the problems. Business problems are fuzzy, hairy and blurry. They are wicked, as the English say. They do not have only two dimensions – they are multi-dimensional. Only holograms can do this justice.
Going beyond what is given means to imagine. We start by imagining what it is like to actually receive the data. To spend time with the given input, not just observing it visually but conversing with it, touching it and walking through it. Just as parking a car requires an awareness of spatial relations, taking a decision is a spatial equation. There are pieces of data which are close, and elements of information that are currently irrelevant to us. We want to explore what matters more – and deselect or ‘decide away’ what is merely noise and not signal now. We want the fragments of what matters to have depth and three-dimensionality. And we want stories that help us learn by inquiry, asking bigger and better questions. We want to get in the zone of our data.
The aesthetics of visualization are charming no doubt, but we can save the Damien Hirst swirls for the wall. Our purpose is rather more serious at the moment, and the decisions we are taking could be clinical, financial. We don’t just want to see the data, we need to be with it and feel the data from the inside. The best place to take decisions is from right inside our real-time data flow.
Re-imagining what is given means to re-experience it. The world has had a pretty volatile and unpredictable time of it this millennium – from dotcom and great financial crashes to endless wars, plagues and inflation. We have all the technology we’ve ever had in history but something tells me that the data-driving is not working.
Our decisions are basically still the same, like people who complain about the climate but live the same lifestyles we pay a lot of lip service to the data script. We even have the audacity to talk about ‘the data’ as if it were singular and factual, whenever it suits ourselves. Most industries do not decide in real time, and in places like medicine and finance that is a huge problem itself. Even when real-time data is a possibility, it is being largely ignored – also because there is too much of it. We have bred a tribe of nerds to take care of the data, but it is essentially us who need to take what is given.
In what way can data become immersive and tactile?
Holograms by themselves are useless. If all you do is add a third dimension to an already flat world you do nothing. But holograms are the start of the solution. Sequencing data into narrative units using holograms is the evolutionary spurt required. Story units which do not only visualize but immerse. ‘Problem, Solution, Benefit’ is the tired sequence most commonly met with in commerce and it is rhetorical rather than dramatic. Far better to attempt true narration with a more truthful ‘Challenge, Complication, Resolution’ – where the second narrative phase of Complication tackles the hidden depths of the question. A complication is not the same thing as a problem. A complication is why the problem cannot be solved. The problem and the obstacle to its solution are two things. Holograms can deliver that text and subtext memorably.
But narrative sequence is merely the first major shift. Ultimately, data holograms need to not only interact but enable participation. And some day over the current horizon of immersive data experience, decision makers can enact their own holograms to dramatize decisions. Imagine if you could enact a decision just like a game of chess, experiencing all the game’s dynamic potency.
Chess is a game of decision making that mimics strategy. Military strategy – the marshalling of resources – is the epitome of decisiveness. A strategos was a Greek general, marshalling his army. Today, our armies consist of serried ranks of structured and unstructured data points. We need a new way to get involved in the game and fully immerse ourselves.
The modern world is too complex and changeable to rely on gut instinct. Not knocking it, and yes the human brain is just one of the places we make decisions from. Our guts do think. But gut instincts also need a little education from time to time. Habit is the greatest obstacle to great decision making – in the words of Irish writer Samuel Beckett, habit is a great deadener. Between the instinctive and the habitual we need a little evolution.
We tend to totally ignore the space we take decisions in. And as more and more of our decisions impact everyone around us, we need to think about this space. We need to share not just our own decisions but those of other people. What if holographic sequences could provide the tactile collaboration necessary to evolve and refine the way human beings now take their decisions?
Between our data and our decisions there exists a gap. Decisions themselves are a form of data that need to be stored, shared and remembered. What if you could access the shared decisions of your entire enterprise? Imagine data holograms as the missing link between floods of excessive input and finely crafted output. You cannot invent the future using only the past, you must imagine as well as work with what is given already. Data is vital but it is not everything. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to start working with the given data first? When the given has been experienced, you can imagine.
“Great stories happen to those who can tell them.”
Ira Glass
When the inner space of data meets the outer space of people, products and places, the spatial realm is whole. Working on any one plane will bear rich fruit, but the entire harvest is only possible if the whole is complete. The slide deck, full of colorful visualizations, is the acme of collaborative decision making currently. Every pitch meeting has its deck. Every investor conference gets the deck. Slides and charts capture the information but do not represent the actual life of the data itself. Just like words on a page are not the real words performed. You enact data and make it real when you can overlay it on your real world, when you can explore a piece of information or knowledge directly in relation to reality.
Decisions which impact everyone certainly deserve holographic enactment. Strategic decisions involve long-term results and impact – they too deserve it. Some of the world’s most important, long-ranging decisions were never shared or stored and were taken in secret. Organizations that take decisions in secret are doomed. Holographic immersion is not only an optimal medium for taking decisions, it also serves to store them over time and provide access to the corporate memory bank.
Our human lives take place between attention and memory. Right now, we pay so little attention to the given data our world is telling us – and we forget what little we do pay attention to almost immediately. Holographic narrative can widen the frame of reference between attention and memory so we can reverse this.
Once upon a time rote learning was the norm in education. As the world of knowledge became exponential and ever-changing, memorization has its limits. But we still need to remember, even if the focus has changed. Knowledge may be redundant, however curiosity and creativity are more critical than ever. Educational decision making is perhaps the most significant form on the planet today, outstripping healthcare and finance in its future social relevance. Educational data is some of the most ignored, forgotten information – this needn’t be so. In the era of lifelong learning, immersive data can impart and store life skills.
Another salient issue with the data cycle is that analysis need not lead to insight alone. Analysis can also lead to inspiration, the higher octave of insight. And inspiration leads to new ideas – ideas, the very lifeblood of society. Actionable insights are one thing, fresh ideas are a whole new level of value and impact. To ideate is not only to think, but to think completely afresh. An idea is not an observation or an opinion or an assessment. It never happened before and does not come from someone else. Ideas are the essence of human value. Algorithms don’t have ideas. Even AI doesn’t have ideas. The artifice in Artificial Intelligence is the absence of ideas. Because AI can only compute what is fed into it originally, it cannot come up with the new.
Only you can. Only you can be totally, utterly new.
And that is the heart and soul of the innovation problem. Innovations are the new decisions that are taken upon new ideas – and they are natural to the innovator. But not to the organization. Immersive data holography is most enticing here when it comes to sharing innovation.
We are not talking about slick visuals or blueprints or artist’s impressions. We’re talking here about an immersive experience whereby data is transformed into ideas and ideas into innovation – not just before your eyes but spatially, experienced fully in the round. How?
Imagine being able to explore data is proximate space. Imagine the space within a corporate meeting coming alive with data episodes which can be fully explored and extended at will. Now imagine decision makers being able to not only explore that data in space but express new ideas using the same immersive medium.
The spatial realm allows us to use the outside of our physical beings like the inside of our mind – to share data, decisions and ideas in altogether new ways. Crucially, it allows your audience to explore the data with as much agency and curiosity as you the presenter. You are no longer persuading or attempting to persuade. You have gone beyond mere rhetoric and are involving others. You have gone beyond three-dimensional imagery and narrative holograms to involve them in participation and ultimate self-creation. The very essence of the new economy – data and IP – can now be articulated spatially between two or more people. Empty space becomes your blackboard, your whiteboard, your screen. Let me give some examples.
Let’s go back to education for a moment. All over the world, education is shifting from knowledge to creativity. As knowledge becomes redundant and obsolescent, creativity is the urgent task of all educators – problem-solving, not solution memorization. Ideation is replacing memorization. Inspiration is supplanting memory. Now you still need memory, to be sure. But the curiosity, the creativity and the problem-solving skills that were all too often assumed rather than promoted in the educational past need to be rebooted.
Data holograms in narrative mode not only immerse learners in existing knowledge – they help convert knowledge to human wisdom, the application of insight. Surely wisdom and innovation are the real talismans. Not just knowledge and creativity but the wisdom to apply know-how and the courage to innovate the new.
A series of holographic episodes in the classroom, lecture hall or auditorium can dramatize knowledge as never before. It can ‘perform’ the available wisdom of current problem-solving techniques. And it can enable the exercise of learners applying their own techniques. Crucially, this experience can be shared across educational landscapes, extending access and transforming the reach of great education today. The Oxfords, the Harvards and the Sorbonnes of the past can evolve beyond their physical loci and become omnipresent.
Access, creativity and retention are the great challenges surrounding education and each can be enriched holographically. Again, it is not the holography itself which enable this transformation but the dramatization of holograms using narrative techniques. The unit of time allotted to any particular subject – the class which is so often a mental blur to the student – can be an arena of dramatic action using data and ideas.
Data points in time become spatial data dramas, mini-episodes which appear between speaker and audience and can be explored mutually. Complex educational, financial or medical decision-making can be shared together in real-time spatial awareness, involving more human senses including the motor skills so core to the way we move and take action in space.
When you’re in the metaverse you leave your body behind. Your mind is having the mental experience of a body, but you are detached from your real-world space. You’re not actually present. In the spatial realm you remain utterly present and pull the virtual world into your own space.
We have evolved beyond industry and even technology to a world where value resides in data and the intellect. It is an artificially intelligent world, but still naturally dumb. That dumbness relates to our loss of decision-making power, our surrender of tactical life skills like manual driving and our incapacity to leverage the data. We need a way to get inside the data flow itself. To explore the new world of digital metrics and utilize it to inform, improve, renew and revisit our own decisions.
This shouldn’t be left to data architects, scientists or analysts no matter how skilled or insightful they are. We need a theater of enactment just like the ancient Greeks built their ‘places of seeing’ to experience the complex decisions their cities were composed of. Greek theaters were not flat screens but spatial experiences where actors performed the complex and often tragic decisions human beings are forced to confront. These were not simply places of entertainment, they were places of education and evolution – all the more powerful for the emotional force fields they created. Data in the spatial realm can enact these force fields.