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information explained

Information from MAYAnMAYA on Vimeo.

I like these simple explanations of things by MAYA. Maybe they could explain how the world began in this style as well.

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No wonder news programs don't invite designers on to debate. What a terribly naive position. Information Graphics are not new they are just short hand for the reader to understand multiple points of a story in one image. Like the Guardian's where does our tax money go chart or the IED map in Afghanistan. It shows the reader the scale and perspective of the situation. Surely Edward R Tufte has said most things on this in his 3 books. http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi

Newsnight debate on infographics. See CR for full article and debate.
I think the crowd sourced map for buses in India was a great idea. Showing how information graphics can be useful. John Maeda said Programmers are the new designers and I think he's right. The question is not if it looks pretty its a question of does it work and is it useful. We are learning to disseminate and question information in many more ways and a whole lot faster tahn ever before. Surely this short hand is the out come of this cultural shift.

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Generation AD (Attention Deficit)

Facebook and Bebo risk
infantilising' the human mind

Greenfield warns social networking sites are changing children's brains, resulting in selfish and attention deficient young people

Patrick Wintour, political editor
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 24 February 2009 10.52 GMT

This rings true, interestingly so for social networks. Most people's aim is to boast about the quantity of friends like its a race to the end. I feel there was a difference on IM back a few years where you were honored to be on the buddy list and those IM chats could last for hours.

Facebook feels like your at one big long boring dinner party that never ends and everyone's bragging about going Skiing, City breaking or eating shit. They can't even be bothered to talk directly to you so you just get a status update, but it's pretty much rattling the stick in the swill bucket as Wells called it.

I'm sure we will see the rise of social network detox counsillors coming to save the day. Maybe they can just add it as an app.

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