The recent posts about mind-mapping make for a good segue to some
research and writing I've done on the topic of how to present gobs of
heterogeneous data in ways that let you immediately grok it, wrap
your head around it, get the big picture, see the forest for the
trees (pick your favorite cliche)...
Information technology has done a lot in the realm of making it
really easy to create and disseminate lots of data. However, we
haven't made much progress in the realm of improving the way we
consume that data in aggregate. The problem of organizing,
categorizing, and making information more accessible is simply a
symptom of a larger and deeper problem:
When we look at large piles of data (without looking at each data
point and parsing it in our heads and then flagging it, starring it,
tagging it, filing it or categorizing it in some way) we have no idea
what we're looking at, it's all a big mile of opaque mush to us.
We can continue down this path of manually getting a grip on our
data, one data point at a time. Or we can explore ways to serve up
data in ways that are more transparent and "more comprehensible in
aggregate".
Mind-mapping is one of them, but still in its infancy as far as
becoming an universally useful tool (capable of replacing the table
for example.)
Here are some essays exploring why it is that "data in aggregate" (as
presented in lists and tables and text blobs) is so hard to "get" and
some ideas about how to make it easier to digest.
http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Journal/
ClassificationPaperOutline2
In particular:
http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Journal/
TheProblemWithHeterogeneousInformation
http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Journal/PrinciplesOfGrok
http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Journal/WhyIsDataSoHardToGrok
http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Journal/LookingToThePhysicalWorld
http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Journal/TheUseOfColor
http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Journal/ChunkingOverTime
http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Journal/OneUppingNature
I realize this is a lot of material, it took me a long time even to
get to this preliminary draft, but any comments and feedback would be
appreciated. Please ping me though if you do add comments. Thx, Mimi
On Jan 19, 2006, at 10:02 AM, Reid Ellis wrote:
Open source, GPL'ed mindmapping tool for those who want to explore
this:
http://freemind.sourceforge.net
Versions available for Mac, Windows, Linux (Debian, SuSe, and other
rpm-based Linux).
Probably not as polished as the official Buzan version (although
Buzan's http://www.mind-map.com seems to be down). But it might
give people more ideas.
Reid
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