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.

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

More in Google

Information Visualization: From Aristotle, Plato, to the year 3706

There can be no words without images --- Aristotle

Of all the senses, trust only the sense of sight ---this is paraphrased, and taken from Metaphysics, Aristotle [E.&.O.E., info courtesy Anonymous Blogger]

In the mind’s eye:
This view of the word as preeminent is at odds with millennia of thought. Aristotle said, “There can be no words without images.” Plato gave primacy to sight over all the other senses, saying, “Of all the senses, trust only the sense of sight.” While intellectually extolling the virtue of text over image, Western culture has clearly retained a special place for images. Many of today’s most commonly used phrases suggest we agree with Aristotle and Plato that we perceive primarily through sight: “I see your point,” “Let me see,” “Seeing eye to eye,” “Love at first sight,” “See what I mean,” and, of course, “In the mind’s eye,” just to name a few.
We are, after all, a visual species. Yes, a scent, a taste, a sound, even the texture of an object can evoke powerful memories, but it is sight that adds definition. Think back to the last time you sensed a particular perfume or smelled a favorite food. What images came to mind? Read more from Professional communicators for a digital age, by Cameron Sanders. SOURCE: Creating Digital Content, John Rice & Brian McKernan, Editors, © McGraw-Hill 2001 · POSTED: 04/09/04

The Future historians' perspective:

Archeologists in the year 3706 uncovering the buried ruins of any major city in the world will no doubt find text on billboards, storefronts, traffic signs, and so on in the languages we know and use today. These words however will probably not be understood by 38th Century scientists because languages of today will eventually become obsolete and forgotten. Luckily, there will be an energetic and tenacious researcher with a well-used digging tool who will find along the viaducts and abandoned highways in the old cities evidence of writing that will be instantly recognized and easily read. For amid the buried rubble of civilizations long past will be elaborated and brightly colored signs and symbols created by graffiti artists that will last through the millennia. This often scoffed and criminalized form of visual communication will in the future become the one, universally accepted language. Therefore, the future of mass communications does not reply on the preservation of pens, paper, computers, or satellites. In the vast future, we will understand ancient civilizations because of compressed paint in spray cans. Continue reading Syntactic Theory of Visual Communication, by Paul Martin Lester, Ph.D.

See also: The Art & Practice of Creative Visualization by Ophiel - The Philosophers Stone The Art & Practice of Creative Visualization by Ophiel - There’s more to creative visualization than meets the eye! [ART & PRACTICE OF CREATIVE VISUALIZATION contains unusual, but highly effective prose style intended to appeal to a beginning down home, grass roots reader. The author provides a clear explanation of what visualization is, and why it works]

Information Visualization Demystified

As library and information professional, have so long continued my search to find a nexus between the twain, viz., a) Information Visualization and b) best practices in the library world.

Librarians were aware of the importance of the technique of information visualization. As late as 1999 the rules for cataloging were suppose to visualize this approach:

For example, a user entering a keyword-within-record search for the terms “information visualization” may intend to retrieve a specific work with those terms in the title, but may also be interested in retrieving records for other yet-unknown works that contain those terms in subject-related fields. See the details, Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access, Task Force on the Review of the IFLA Guidelines for OPAC Displays 1999
And the Information Visualization Guru, Ben Shneiderman, was already working on a project as early as 1993, with a OCLC Research grants award

Again, my search was limited to finding a middle path. By middle path, I mean, a path that is neither directly connected with hardware nor with software. Libraries (and their tools such as, indexing, cataloging, classification, metadata, ontology, taxonomies, knowledge work, etc.), feel, felt and found something unique in an avenue (so far untapped) and that avenue is: information visualization.

Definitions of Visualization    visualize:

"to form a mental vision, image, or picture of (something not visible or present to sight, or of an abstraction); to make visible to the mind or imagination" [The Oxford English Dictionary, 1989] see also: Scientific Visualization / Example Definitions

At last, I did succeed and hence the title: Information Visualization Demystified.

To accomplish great things we must first dream, then visualize, then plan… believe… act!     ---Alfred A. Montapert

For the above quote and what follows, I sincerely acknowledge the creative mind of Brad Eden [Head, Web and digitization services, University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) Libraries]. Thank you Brad and Debra Riley-huff at LITA Blog for the demystifying information, entitled: 3D Information Visualization: An Introduction and Practical Applications
And so said Riley-huff:

We reviewed some library OPACs that are currently incorporating some type of Information Visualization such as AquaBrowser. You can see an example at the Lexington Public Library

One of the most interesting applications of 3-D Visualization technology can be experienced by taking a look at Cubic Eye. CubicEye breaks out your browser window into a cube with each “wall” functioning as an independent browser window. Individual 3-D elements, if supplied on the Web page, can be rotated on the floor of the cube for further examination.

We also examined several 3-D projects in the humanities, which utilized 3-D technologies to recreate architectural and anthropological sites on the web.

We can utilize these tools in our libraries not only by making our users aware of what is available in terms of completed projects in their subject areas, but also by exploring and incorporating Information Visualization into our service delivery and instruction. The serious consideration and utilization of visual technologies will add an increased level of appeal and interest in a language our users are already fluent in and accustomed to using.

See Library Technology Reports: 3D VISUALIZATION TECHNIQUES
2D and 3D Information Visualization, Resources, Applications, and Future, By Brad Eden, Ph.D.

The INVENT framework: Examining the role of information visualization in the reconceptualization of digital libraries, by Karl V. Fast and Kamran Sedig, Journal of Digital Information, Volume 6 Issue 3, Article No. 362, 2005-08-08

Above all, Yahoo Directory, lists Dr. Edward Tufte, under the category, viz, Library and Information Science. This should not surprise any one who is by now demystified.

See also: my webliography:

>>>Innovative Practices to Connect Every Book, Its Reader
>>>Mining The Library Catalog
>>>Information visualization - This blogsphere's perspective

And don't miss to read: ...Visualization of Information Resources for Professionals, By Tim Bray. Information Outlook, Vol. 6, No. 12, December 2002
...Designing Information-Abundant Websites: Issues and Recommendations, Ben Shneiderman Revised: February 26, 1997
...Library catalogs, InfoVis:Wiki.

Twenty Percent Rule - Visualizing a Free Lunch

The 80/20 rule has become 80% information, 20% imagination for me. ME Strauss

I just reviewed a book: The Google Story, by David Vise, and Mark Malseed. Read my review at Amazon
This book presents an interesting description of the 20 percent rule (pp. 131-133, 137-140, 212). According to this rule, staff is permitted at Google to be innovative and creative. Wherein, twenty percent of the staff time is spent as-you-like-it.

At Google there is a 20 percent rule, that encourages employees to be creative and innovative. Employees are told to work on their own interests for 20 percent of their time, or one day per week. These projects are encouraged to spark the creativity of Google's employees and to motivate them to come up with new products and ideas. To quote Krishna Baharat from Google (who developed Google News as one of his 20 percent projects), "The 20 percent time was invented for people to just explore. People are productive when they are working on things they see as important or they have invented, or are working on something they are passionate about. This is also an opportunity to get bottom-up innovation. There is only so much that top management can specify or ordain." (Vise, 2005, p. 132). Employees have some flexibility around their 20 percent time -- they can use it weekly, or pool it, to spend more concentrated time on their projects.[Barb has this extract and more research on the patterns in the corporate culture]

What The Google Story does not tell you about this rule, as well the conceptual boundaries, in a holistic sense is given below, from another source:

For those of you not familiar with the Google enterprise structure, they have established a ‘golden rule’ for managing innovation. No, it’s not the 80/20 rule; it’s the 70/20/10 rule. 70 percent of your time on the core business, 20 percent on related projects, and 10 percent on unrelated new businesses. Let’s say for someone working 50 hours a week, 5 hours would be focused on new projects. This is how Google has established itself as an innovator, a leader in the search engine world, and more recently a leader in new technical areas. Continue reading

If you wish to read The Google story here is an extract: From the Book

Here, I am not raising any issues relating to Web at work, or Personal Time vs. Company Time, etc.. You may as well Google for more on this dichotomy and work culture as it evolves

The bottom line is free Lunch, sure, albeit for corporate benefit. And don't forget: the rule can be ten percent or twenty percent - but it works and organizations can benefit by this free will and freedom to be innovative and creative.