“Looking to the future, the next big step will be for the very concept of the ‘device’ to fade away.” ~ Sundar Pichai
“Above all else show the data.” ~ Edward Tufte
ACT IV, Chapter I
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?
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.
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A quick note from Author and Holographer, Paul Duffy
I really like this clip as a way to demonstrate how data drives Informational Holography in the Spatial Realm. Its amazing to watch how real-time data is transformed into a meaningful holographic expression.
It is even more so when experienced at human scale.
You literally walk into the data and interact with it. This is very powerful, yet natural as a user. I sense this is likely only the beginning of what we will see in the remainder of this decade when it comes to the concept of Informational Holography.
~ Pau Duffy, June 2023.