Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
1
Envisioning information
We must create a new language, consider a transitory state of new
illusions and layers of validity and accept the possibility that there
may be no language to describe ultimate reality, beyond the language
of visions.
(Denes, 1979, p. 3)
1.1
Visual thinking
Envisioning
means bringing into the condition of vision for the purposes of
contemplation, making visible, to enable visualization. It is what this topic prac-
tises. For at least a century we have known that envisioning is about giving
information to people in a form that is better suited to all our minds.
This work does not concentrate on the mechanics of getting information
into and out of the machine, but instead with how you get it out to people
(Figures 1.1 and 1.2). To communicate spatial structure is hard without involving
the sense of sight.
1
Language, along with music, the most sophisticated use
of hearing, is an excellent means of conveying ideas and thoughts, but cannot
present a large amount of information in a structured form at speed.
2
Neither
can touch or our other senses.
1
'Visual displays of information encourage a diversity of individual viewer styles and rates of
editing, personalizing, reasoning, and understanding. Unlike speech, visual displays are simultane-
ously a wideband and a perceiver-controllable channel' (Tufte, 1990, p. 31).
2
'Human visual perception is performed by the most complex structure of the known universe,
the visual cortex, that contains at least 10
10
neurons, where each neuron on average contains 10
4
synapses (gates)' (Papathomas and Julesz, 1988, p. 355).
