The Latest from The Curator
I’ve been a fan of The Curator for quite some time now, but I found their latest batch of articles to be especially interesting and thought-provoking, for various reasons.
“Information Design and the Modern World”:
We live in a world increasingly saturated with information, and thanks in large part to the worldwide web, data now flows faster than the speed of light. Whether this means downloading massive amounts of text to a computer or mobile device, sharing links and ideas via social networks, or simply accessing news media resources, the reality is that there is an abundance of data in today’s world. Information designer Richard Saul Wurman puts it bluntly: “A weekday edition of The New York Times contains more information than the average person was likely to come across in a lifetime in 17th century England.”
With so much data spinning around us, how can we make sense of it all, and for goodness sake, how can we choose where to focus our attention?
[W]hile we’ve all discussed the shortcomings of Facebook (it’s a time vacuum, it’s voyeuristic, it violates privacy and lacks boundaries, it substitutes virtual friendships for real ones), how often do we discuss the downside of not being on Facebook? Point blank, it’s isolating.
“So Much Depends on Photography”:
[W]e take a great weight upon our shoulders when we pick up a camera. In On Photography, Sontag warns that “to photograph is to appropriate the thing being photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge – and, therefore, like power.” Few of us consider such things as we are snapping photos of our night on the town and posting them on our Facebook profiles. How often do we stop to consider how we are representing the world, what part of the world we are allowing to take a life of its own, to live on forever, when we take a picture?