Comments on: The Bad https://pages.graphics.cs.wisc.edu/765-10/archives/456-the-bad Course web for CS838 Spring 2010, Visualization Wed, 22 Feb 2012 22:15:49 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.7.4 By: hinrichs https://pages.graphics.cs.wisc.edu/765-10/archives/456-the-bad#comment-119 Tue, 16 Feb 2010 09:36:01 +0000 http://graphics.cs.wisc.edu/Courses/Visualization10/?p=456#comment-119 I’d like to add to this that there seem to be some intentional groupings of ideas by proximity which aren’t made explicit. I.e., where the tracks intersect, the nearby trends / events seem to be related, but this can’t be verified. I think the tangled look and difficulty of interpreting the graph serves 2 main purposes – to prevent the makers of the map from being held accountable for missed predictions (even though the map warns you not to take it too seriously,) and secondly, it’s meant to convey the idea that the future is hard to read as it is, and while they could do a good job of organizing things so that you can read their predictions in a well-ordered way, you would miss out on getting a feel for how hard it is to make sense out of all of the interleaving trends.

Honestly I don’t think this graphic really fails at its task, which I think is mainly to entertain and provoke. However, as a clear, accessible portrayal of well-organized ideas, I think it’s a off the mark, probably by design.

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