An ‘unrequited love’ is what Andrew defines, or questions, the relationship between data and media. However data is the message and media is the medium so do they not go hand in hand anyway and can one function with out the other? In order for society to employ and use more data and information, we need to be continually inventing and improving new technologies and media platforms to archive this information and allow us to access it. Furthermore, as society becomes more intellectual, in terms of inventing these new technologies, we add to the data and information making even more for us to utilise and learn from making this just another cyclical aspect of life. In terms of Howard Rheingold’s ‘Infotention’ tutorials his dashboard is what converges all his data into the one place – or into the one medium – where he is able to interact with it. Infotention is a word created by Rheingold and it is using a blend of social and mental skills and technology to filter information.
In the Edwards reading he argues that there is no single instrument that collects the signals or observations in which we can account for an entire knowledge infrastructure of climate change (2010: xiii). Rather, it takes a complex interwoven infrastructure to organise endless amounts of data; which becomes global by passing through a series of data models. He argues that everything we know about the world’s climate we know through models. He states three such models as; computer models, simulation models and reanalysis models (which recreate a sense of history from historical weather data) (2010: xiii).
I think that its important that there is a medium for filtering or archiving data and that it constantly expands and evolves along with the constant flow of information. Without this connection between media and data we really have very little hope of being able to use information well, as well as the constant expansion of global knowledge.
Edwards, Paul N. (2010) ‘Introduction’ in A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: xiii-xvii (note that you can download sample chapters at <http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12080http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12080>
Rheingold, Howard (2011) ‘A mini-course on infotention’ <http://howardrheingold.posterous.com/a-mini-course-on-infotentionhttp://howardrheingold.posterous.com/a-mini-course-on-infotention>
