#week 5!

Tagged by my beautiful @crinkle-eyed-boo thanks, bb!

Handsome devil.

Week 5

The key terms I’ll be looking at are: The Data Explosion & Data for the Common Good Alongside these two key terms, we’re supposed to be visiting the exhibition in ArtScience Museum titled Big Bang Data that I’ve actually been to before.

In this case, I’d like to explore one of the exhibits that we will be visiting as I found it extremely interesting and pertinent to the idea of The Data Explosion. As per the video you see, the exhibit comprises of several machines that actually convert the data from stock exchanges at the end of the day to form a stunning visual of something akin to the night sky. The exhibition was created in conjunction with IBM and shows how data en masse can actually be used to create something stunningly beautiful. The combination of both economic data (which tends to be a source of stress for many) with solar systems may not be a common topic, but the metaphor behind the exhibit is both stunning and beautiful – data sources with the connotations of stress and industrialization can and are turned into sources of relaxation – something that benefits everyone.

In the same way, the metaphor can be applied to The Data Explosion in which we now have so much data we have no idea what to do with it. In using the data to produce applications which can be made for the common good of people – such as identifying dangerous areas in a city simply through using the mass of data to track which locations people avoid, we are given a chance to do good for the city around us. Perhaps through reinventing ways to keep that specific part of the city safe or even using more collected data to pinpoint and reduce specific problems in which safety is at risk – the data we collect from different sources can all be put together to form something fully functional.