Reviewing the book “Shaping Things“, written by Bruce Sterling, John Thackara states: “Our dilemma is not that we receive too much information. We don’t receive anywhere near the quantity of data it takes to overload our neurons; our minds are capable of processing and analyzing many gigabits of data per second—a lot more data than any of today’s supercomputers can process and act on in real time. We feel flooded because we’re getting information unfiltered, unsorted, and unframed. We lack ways to select what’s important. The design task is to make information digestible, not to keep it out. I call them macroscopes. Tools, and aesthetic notions, that help us understand – and act mindfully in – the big picture.”
We can easily associate the definition of Macroscopes to the Diagrams we design in our Density Lab: the general purpose is exactly the same. It has to be said that it’s such a wide and general concept that it can fit a lot of different tools and activities.
Better, we recognize ourself in the description of the Places & Spaces: Mapping Science exhibition found in a blog of a user-experience designer, that recalls Thackara: “It’s a concise, enjoyable and clear exhibit showing concrete examples of what John Thackara might call ‘macroscopes’: artworks, mappings and visualisations of complex interconnected systems (in this case science and intellectual property) that help ‘ordinary folk’ examine the choices they make and those being made for them.”

Looking forward to the next edition!

Tags: Complexity, macroscopes, maps