Numbers, Words and Colors | MIT World

About the Lecture

Tools developed by Martin Wattenberg and his associate Fernanda Viégas, have changed the way people look at and use visualizations, by empowering and equipping users with the methodology needed to ask different questions. Wattenberg, whose background is in math and computer science, asks how the humanities have influenced the evolution of data visualization and then answers with several examples from his own work.

Web Seer compares Google's "auto-suggest" feature in one-to-one, weighted comparisons such as "why doesn't he…" and "why doesn't she…" The resultant text image uses the size of arrows and words to reflect frequency, demonstrating how text can impart meaning.

Another Wattenberg/Viégas collaboration is Many Eyes, a social media tool and Web site that has "democratized" powerful visualization systems by putting them in the hands of general audiences. This tool lets users visualize data in numerous ways, from scatterplots and bar charts to tree maps and stack graphs.

Word Tree, a visualization technique that lets users pick a word or phrase from a data set, shows the different contexts in which it appears via a tree-like branching structure. Chimera takes care of the "boilerplate problem" by examining large collections of text, such as contracts, and pointing out identical phrases. Seeing results arranged in faux 3D "skyscrapers" clearly illustrates levels of recurrence. Although Word Tree andChimera are fundamentally repetition searches, they are important tools for semantic analysis: simple, but revealing.

The idea behind Phrase Net is to expose a text's underlying network; this visualization tool diagrams the relationships between different words used in a text. It uses a simple form of pattern matching to provide multiple views of the concepts contained a book, speech, or poem.

Another Wattenberg/ Viégas collaboration is Fleshmap, "an inquiry into human desire." The relationship between the body and its visual and verbal representation are explored in a series of artistic studies employing song lyrics and body imagery. Flickr Flow, Wattenberg explains, is an experiment whose materials are color and time. Software calculated the relative proportions of different colors seen in photos of Boston taken during each month of the year and plotted those colors on a wheel creating a "river of meaning."
Wattenberg addresses questions regarding the impact of race in personified visualizations, and his subjective motives in selecting particular data for analysis. He admits that his "hard drive is loaded with failed visualizations," but emphasizes that the visualization process should be one of trial and error. As for encouraging the development of visual literacy, Wattenberg concludes, "as visualization becomes part of the discourse and people realize, 'this is something that's powerful, it can help me make my case in life,' they'll learn… I'm hoping for education and good, old-fashioned human brain power."




Numbers, Words and Colors | MIT World

A Classroom Divided

55:16 minutes

One day in 1968, Jane Elliott, a teacher in a small, all-white Iowa town, divided her third-grade class into blue-eyed and brown-eyed groups and gave them a daring lesson in discrimination. This is the story of that lesson, its lasting impact on the children, and its enduring power thirty years later.

The Stanford prison experiment

The Stanford prison experiment

Who is Che Gevara?? more stuff

Who was the real Che Guevara?

Saturday, March 6, 2010 - 11:00

By Ash Pemberton

Almost everyone has seen the iconic photo of Ernesto Che Guevara taken in 1960 by photographer Alberto Korda. In the decades since it was taken, it has been reproduced countless times, including on towels, lunchboxes, cigarette packets and especially T-shirts.
In the process, the real legacy of Guevara's life has been obscured and diluted, especially in First World countries.
This symbol of socialist revolution has been watered-down and commercialised — turned into a symbol of vague rebellion. While people are familiar with the image of Che, many probably couldn't say who it is, let alone describe the politics of the man.
In recent years, the films The Motorcycle Diaries and Che have helped to popularise some aspects of his life, but there is still much confusion in popular consciousness about what he actually did and stood for.
Che is most famous for his role in the Cuban Revolution and his part in guerrilla insurrections in Latin America and Africa.
However, it is the period preceding this that shaped his thinking the most. As a young man on his famous motorcycle trip across South America, he witnessed the gross inequalities imposed upon people and the brutality used to maintain this system.
He identified imperialism as the main enemy of the people of the world. He saw the struggle for human freedom as global, which necessarily had to transcend borders to defeat the exploitative system imposed by the big capitalist powers.
He travelled to Guatemala to learn about and work with the progressive forces backing the leftist government of Jacobo Arbenz, who had introduced a series of land reforms and pro-poor policies.
Guevara could see the US was preparing to invade to protect its assets, as it had done many times before.
As the US began to destabilise the Arbenz government in preparation for a military coup, Guevara observed a number of mistakes made by the progressive forces which, influenced his thinking on how to make a successful revolution. He identified the most crucial mistake being an unwillingness to arm the people to allow them to defend — and extend — their gains.
A US-backed coup, combined with US airforce bombings, overthrew Arbenz and destroyed popular hopes for change.
From Guatamala, Che linked up with Fidel Castro's group of exiled Cuban revolutionaries in Mexico, and joined them in the struggle against the Batista dictatorship in Cuba. He understood the necessity of acting to create change and was able to put this into practice in Cuba, both before and after the triumph of the revolution. "The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall", he said.
Che insisted that "there is no valid definition of socialism other than the abolition of the exploitation of one human being by another". Human liberation was central to Che's thinking.
"The ultimate and most important revolutionary aspiration is to see human beings liberated from their alienation."
At a time when brutal and undemocratic Stalinist regimes were the main form of "socialism" in the world, Guevara's vision focused on the well-being of individuals in the context of broader society.
He speculated about the potential for the transformation of people and culture under socialism, where petty desires would be put aside and where people would be motivated to act for the common good.
The legacy of Che can be found today in the unfolding revolutions across Latin America, and in a wide variety of progressive struggles throughout the world. Fidel Castro once explained that "political work isn't reciting a catechism about Marx and Lenin to people every day, but rather being able to awaken human motivation and morality".
Powerful people today would love to see Che's legacy reduced to the level of a T-shirt, which they could then sell to people and call it "rebellion". But Che did not simply rebel ways harmless to those with power. He aimed to overthrow the corrupt old system and build a new one based on human needs and solidarity.
The fact that millions all over the world have seen through the commercialisation of Che's image and still embrace the real spirit of what he stood for is testament to the fundamental desire of people all over the world to live with dignity and freedom.