About this Blogsphere:

This blogsphere attempts to capture, catalog and share resources relating to visual perception of information. It is about a world mostly dealing with Physical (Touch, Taste, See/Sight, Smell and Hear) and sometimes Metaphysical (and that is none-of-the-above category). Physical, for instance, touch (e.g., feel, felt, found), look and visualization, is here with an attempt to combine verbal, vocal and visual--to synchronously see, hear, share and do much more. Interestingly, in order to visualize one does not need special skills, competencies, etc. It is all about common sense, especially with human visualizations. In short, "information is in the eye of the beholder." Continue reading much more all-ado-about this Blogosphere

Akbani is a Cutchi Memon family name.

April 16, 2006

Labyrinths, Sacred Geometry, Innernet & Visualization

In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth was an elaborate mazelike structure constructed for King Minos of Crete and designed by the legendary artificer Daedalus to hold the Minotaur, a creature that was half man and half bull and was eventually killed by the Athenian hero Theseus. Theseus was aided by Ariadne, who provided him with a fateful thread to wind his way back again. source: Wikipedia See also Electronic Labyrinths

A labyrinth and its relationship with sacred geometry is best illustrated in the following words:
"Sacred geometry is the act of studying the divine act of creation and then using that knowledge to create in the same way. By studying nature, we find that the basic building blocks of creation are geometric. Since a divine hand is responsible for originating the numbers and proportions of the manifest universe, that geometry is sacred. Studying sacred geometry leads us to truth and self-understanding. All societies use sacred geometry to construct their temples, sacred places, and art. Chartres Cathedral, for example. And its labyrinth. Numbers aren't just for counting, nor are they just symbolic. They are the actual essence of everything that exists." Robert Ferré’s Definition

Innernet, according to Linda Johnson, is a part of self-realization. Linda states in the Chapter on ‘Turning on your inner light:
For most Hindus, Self-realization is God-realization. How can this be? ‘The air closed inside a jar is not at all different from the air outside the jar,’ said Shankaracharya. ‘In exactly the same way, your Inner Self is exactly identical with the Self of all. Smash the jar and the air inside it merges seamlessly with the air outside. Smash the illusion that you exist apart from God, and you merge in that divine reality…Think about it. Just as your five fingers are not really separate because they are linked to the same hand, so the Self in you and the Self in me (and the Self in Lassie the dog for that matter) are not really separate because they are linked in the Supreme Self, the consciousness of God.’ source: Linda Johnson. Complete Idiot’s Guide to Hinduism (New York, Alpha Books, 2002). 112. Google for innernet

A real-time connection of all of the above is visualized in the following:
"Occultism has always involved three techniques for changing and creating reality: thinking, speaking, and visualizing." Visualization and the Imagination

"Walking a Labyrinth is a personal meditative activity and can be understood as a path of contemplation or prayer for people in seeking the Divine or seeking peace without regard to any particular religious tradition."—The Hingham Journal, 9/04 LABYRINTHS, Prayer Paths That Promote the Occult.

See also a Listmania at Amazon.com : Changing One's Inner Compass

PS. My second blog Multifaith Information Gateway has more content, context, communication and continuity in the area of religious and spiritual worldviews.

April 05, 2006

Visualizing the Web Infostructure I - Cites, Insights, Farsights

Here I will be using the term infostructure, NOT infrastructure, and in the context of the Web as it evolves.

I am amazed to read the cover story of the Newsweek, April 3, 2006, by Brad Stone and Steven Levy:
Who's Building the Next Web?: Got a lot of free time? You're going to need it to enjoy the fruits of Silicon Valley's latest labors: start-ups that want you to spend even more of your life online.
This article is all about the emerging worlds:

+Digg
+Plum
+Jajah
+Sharpcast
+Prosper ... Read the full story.

And related stories from the Visible as well as the Invisible Web:


~~~~Is Web 2.0 Entering "The Trough of Disillusionment"?<br>
Dion Hinchcliffe Rebuts Jeffrey Zeldman: Web 3.0 – Web 1.0 = Web 2.0

In terms of visualization, I like the reflection this article allows. See this image:
~~~~Newsweek Cover Story Tackles Social Search, Tagging and Related Issues, Reading Shelf, Compiled & Edited By Gary Price, MLIS:

This time Newsweek tackles social search, tagging, and the rest. Flickr's Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield grace the cover. Services mentioned include the usual suspects and a couple of others:
+ Flickr
+ YouTube
+ MySpace
+ Facebook
+ imeem
+ Dabble (This company hasn't even launched yet and the authors can't describe what it is; their pr person should get a raise.)
+ del.icio.us

So you have by now looked, seen, and now please move ahead... with the help of Google Blog Search

***Finally, a farsight [coming from the Cites & Insights' Seventyfive Facets]
25. The future? It ain’t here yet!
Mary Ellen Bates wonders “whether and how I’ll adapt to the New Infosphere” in this “info pro” column in the January/February 2006 EContent. She harks back to the Firesign Theatre’s “The future…you may already be there”—when the future involved a computerized president and “errant PDP-10 microcompu­ters.” (How many people remember when the PDP-10 was a “microcomputer”? In computing power, certainly—but remember the size?)
Bates isn’t quite ready for ubiquitous computing. She offers some useful examples, but also some examples where a lot of us may not desire ubiquitous computing. As for what some people seem to feel is “necessary” today—“Do I really need to monitor the news every ten minutes? Will my life change if I’m not responding to email every quarter hour?” She recognizes the downside of living in the present: failing to take the long view. “Some issues require more than just information; they require contemplation and time to simply let the matter percolate for a while.” Her close, reason by itself to go read the column in full:
I wonder whether this is the future of always-on Web access: instant access to quick information but less time to ruminate, ponder, and reflect. The future is coming faster than it used to, and I wonder if we’re ready for it.

While my stream of consciousness was aggregating all the above today, another librarian in Norway was synchronizing his idea plane to visualize the emerging Web infostructure. Idea plane, notational plane and verbal plane are the three categories Dr. S R Ranganathan explained, as these three manifest the due process of catalgoing.
Read the following:

Chaper 1 - Web 2.0 - new tools

What should I include in this chaper?
Here is my list of things I should write about (inspired by Think Big:
+Blogs
+Wikis
+RSS
+IM/Chat
+Social tagging/folksonomies - del.icio.us, cite.u.like
+Social networks - LibraryThing, Flickr, Orkut, friendster, myspace, spray,
+Podcasting
+Network worlds and games - World of Warcraft, Anarchy Online, Halo
Mashups
Continue your reading from that Blog, called Librarian 1.5

See also: The Semantic web’s place on the Hype Cycle, By Tim Finin on Thursday, August 25th, 2005:
STAGE TECHNOLOGY
On the rise XML Topic Map
At the peak Public Semantic Web
Sliding into the Trough OWL, RSS
Climbing the slope RDF
Off the Hype Cycle Semantic Web



PS. In short, a concern for the Web Infostructure is global, not local anyways.

Visual Communication vistas

UPDATE: CEO roundtable: Top tech players sound off about evolving industry, USA TODAY Updated 5/18/2006
The communications industry is getting flipped on its head and turned inside out. Instant messagers are turning into phones. Cellphones are turning into TVs. And that's only the beginning.

Some interesting references that I came across
Seeing Things Your Way: Information Visualization for a User-Centered Database of Computer Science Literature

I S I S Visual Communications

What's the Difference between Looking and Seeing?

See also: Visual Architecture: The Rule of Three, By Carole Guevin, 2001

Visual architecture is applied to the new media design context and defined as the use of a particular method of building visual information and balancing communication between images and words.
Visual architecture is to be distinguished from the way that Occidental languages train our eyes to read from left to right and from other languages as well, like oriental and middle-eastern ones, which train the eye differently.
The object of this article is not to discuss language eye training, but to point to the more universal language between words and visual objects (picture, illustration, graph, area boxing, layout, titling) and can be extrapolated to advertising, print, TV, Flash development and CD-ROM productions.
Synonyms would be: generating visual attention, or interest, to information presented.

~~~Did You Know about Micosoft's Window Media Player's true colors?: Windows Media Player visualization is displayed when you playback ...
~~~Did you Know Real Player's true colors. Read all about these
---background music sonification, aesthetic & infovis

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