Week 11 Lecture

Datavisualisation or 'dataviz' is an effective way of displaying information in an organised ways so that correlations and causes can be determined. This can allow people to predict future trends in major issues such as global warming, poverty and increasing population.

Dataviz 'translates' data to humans by taking advantage of some basic human instincts. Humans can easily detect shape, colour, position, patterns and movement.

Week 10 Lecture

Multiplicity was explored at a further level during this weeks lecture explaining how collective activity is far more effective in gaining and displaying information. A good example was given in the book 'The Wisdom of Crows' by James Surowiecki. In this book a crowd was asked to guess the weight of ox. It turned out that the average guessed weight was closer to any individual guess which I found very interesting. The fact that no single person could guess the weight. but together finding a closer weight is a prime example of multiplicity.

The concept of multiplicity is especially prominent today in web 2.0. Wikipedia for example depends on other people from around the world to post articles and edit them accordingly. This gives it a much stronger collection of information than any other site. There was also a really interesting idea called 'Photosynth' that used the site Flickr to gather photos of a particular site around the world and create a 3D map of it that the user can explore. This technology is the first of its kind and is sure to harness the true power of networking and multiplicity.

Week 9 Lecture

This Lecture focused on the concept of Web 2.0. A Web 2.0 site allows its users to interact with other users or to change website content, in contrast to non-interactive websites where users are limited to the passive viewing of information that is provided to them. The term first emerged in 2004. The more people use a service, the more useful and valuable it becomes can pretty much some up the effectiveness of web 2.0.