Interpreting Global Flight Maps

kodiaktau writes "Five experts including: artist, environmentalist, aviation consultant, data visualization expert and philosopher interpret a flight map showing global flights. While the imagery of the visualization is intriguing, the interpretations are particularly interesting and show how individual background and experience impact they way they view the data."

Comments

Interpretations

[VorpalRodent]

So, let me get this straight...
The artist looks at it and sees art, without any insight into interpreting the data.
The environmentalist looks at it, and doesn't understand what it's actually showing.
The aviation consultant looks at it and accurately relays exactly what it was intended to represent, with some limited interpretation.
The data visualization expert understands the data, and provides some suggestions for allowing this format to provide more information.
The philosopher is insane

So the intended interpretation of the story is that we each see what we want to see in information. The meta-interpretation is that I should only hire an expert in an appropriate field to analyze my data.

Re:Interpretations

[Picass0]

>> "The meta-interpretation is that I should only hire an expert in an appropriate field to analyze my data."

An aviation consultant is going to be a better expert on the subject than a dog breeder, chef, or locksmith.

"Expert" is an overused and abused title in western civilization. I recently watched a show on BBC about Roy Lichtenstein. He was a 60's pop artist who copied nearly verbatim comic panels from Kirby, Kubert, Novack, and many of the best artist in comics in that day. He projected the panels and traced them onto canvas and painted them with ever so slight modification, placing special emphasis on the dot paterns used in printing.

So the snobby BBC "expert" (Alastair Sooke) debated Dave Gibbons (artist from The Watchmen) and tries to sell Dave on Lichtenstein's art being better than the originals he ripped off. Gibbons puts forth the argument that in no other field, not music or writing, would such wholesale plagerism be tolerated. You can't pass off a Beatles song as your own because you changed on or two small things. Sooke looks Gibbons in the eye and says the original artists were less talented so this is OK.

Sooke, BBC's expert, having no background or interest in comics, has written books trashing the talents of the original artists who Lichtenstein left uncredited. He describes the creations of people like Jack Kirby as "trashy" and "low" and "pulp". As an "expert" Sooke makes the argument that Lichtenstein improved the images he copied (a subjective opinion) and therefore he is the greater artist, even though Lichtenstein in his life never sold an original composition or creation of his own.

Lichtenstein's painting "WHAAM!" has sold for $10 million dollars. It is a ripoff of an Irv Novick panel from "All-American Men of War". Novick, nor any other artist, ever saw a dime from Lichtenstein.

Bottom line - the world is full of "experts". Many of them are well paid and full of rubbish.

http://davidbarsalou.homestead.com/LICHTENSTEINPROJECT.html

.

Re:Eurocentric

[Whalou]

Also, placing Europe in the middle prevents having to split landmasses. When the Americas are in the middle, Europe and Asia are no longer connected.