Volume visualization - The Visualization of Spatial Social Structure - page 248

9

Volume visualization

Once time becomes a dimension within which activities can be viewed,
the map, because of its static cross-sectional view of phenomena, loses
its usefulness.

(Holly, 1978, p. 12)

9.1 The third dimension

You could be forgiven for thinking that the third dimension had already been
utilised in this topic, but that is not so. A dimension is something that can be
both measured and moved around in, allowing the existence of a geometry - the
relative arrangements of objects in space. Thus, real world time is not strictly a
dimension for humans, as we cannot move around in it. 1 As explained before,
but of even greater importance here, although we live in a three-dimensional
world our vision largely waters it down to two dimensions, which our mind then
reconstructs into a particular kind of three dimensions. The world does not appear
to go flat when you shut one eye, but what you think of as the three-dimensional
world is a very human simplification of it.
We mostly think with two-dimensional concepts, and that can be used to
advantage in visualization. Time can be viewed as a third dimension in the
social world when phenomena beyond the simple single lives of individuals
are being considered. A social order of opportunities, jobs, customs and culture
exists and moves in time and space. A disease is a spacetime entity and its social
repercussions can only be understood when it is seen as such, knowing when, as
well as where, it strikes.

1 'It certainly feels like time is passing; I'd be foolish to argue otherwise. But I want to show you
that this feeling is a sort of illusion. Change is unreal. Nothing is happening. The feeling that time
is passing is just that: a feeling that goes with being a certain sort of spacetime pattern' (Rucker,
1984, p. 140).