Living in data : a citizen's guide to a better information future / Jer Thorp.
Material type: TextPublisher: New York : MCD, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021Copyright date: ©2021Edition: First editionDescription: xi, 300 pages : illustrations, maps ; 22 cmContent type:- text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9780374189907
- 0374189900
Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book | Main Library | NonFiction | 001.4226 T517 | Available | 33111010542930 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
In the fall of 2009, the data artist Jer Thorp wrote a pair of algorithms to inscribe names on the 9/11 Memorial in Manhattan. The project involved designing a layout that allowed for "meaningful adjacencies"--family members, business partners, coworkers--to be etched into the bronze in close proximity. Thorp presented his results in competition against another team, a group of financial analysts who had also been working on the problem.The analysts were confident they'd found the most highly optimized solution--a maximum of about 93 percent of the adjacencies could be satisfied--when Thorp, a long-haired artist working on an old broken laptop, presented his layout: it was 99.99 percent solved. The analysts, it turned out, had looked at the data but not at how the data was to be represented. But Thorp considered each name as a unique unit in a real system. He'd solved a data problem by honoring the people from whom the data came, as well as the world in which that data would live.The memorial project represents Thorp's approach to data as a rich medium for personal and community growth. This human-centered approach has defined his work, from The New York Times to the Museum of Modern Art to the Library of Congress; from a submarine at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico to a boat in the middle of Africa's Okavango Delta; from Manchester's town hall to an abandoned school in St. Louis's north side.In Living in Data, Thorp proves that thinking about data in a human context makes us better problem solvers and builds a healthier relationship between us and our data--one that puts our well-being front and center--and that there is a path forward beyond the extractive, impersonal nature of the "big data" era.
Includes bibliographical references.
Living in data -- I data you, you data me (we all data together) -- Data's dark matter -- By canoe and caravan -- Drunk on Zima -- Number of grown sheep that were sheared -- Do/until -- A lossy kind of alchemy -- The rice show -- Paradox walnuts -- St. Silicon's Hospital and the map room -- Te Mana Raraunga -- An internet of what -- Here in dataland.
"A provocative, eye-opening, example-laden exploration of our current and future relationship with data"-- Provided by publisher.