We should use our toolbox to make complexity understandable. We need to use the tools at our disposal to build data literacy by showing the context that data exists in. Because with that data, and with context around the data, we’ll be able to build understanding…
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Sometimes I think about these sorts of working graphics as a sort of mental scaffolding. In the act of rendering data, or drawing our thoughts, we assemble a construct to hang other concepts from. So it’s a construct that can be extended or modified or disassembled and turned into something new.
I come here today because I’m excited about data but also because I’m terrified. I’m terrified that we are having progress without culture in the world of data. And as we’ve seen with these failed industries before, progress without culture does not work.
One of the things that was happening at the time is that one of the accusations that was being made, or that was being proffered by people who made sort of snap, knee-jerk responses to what was going on is that social media is being blamed. Social media was blamed for the worst civil unrest that England had seen in recent years.
So I got curious, and I asked myself what is the Iranian Internet, and who is the Iranian user? I was pissed off enough, like I said, to take a step or to feel the urge to do something. To feel the urge of making something. And the thing that I really wanted to bring across was that censorship is happening in a different country, where it’s being used to bring across information, to make voices heard.