{"id":3374,"date":"2013-09-15T12:48:01","date_gmt":"2013-09-15T10:48:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/?p=3374"},"modified":"2013-09-15T12:51:44","modified_gmt":"2013-09-15T10:51:44","slug":"when-we-pay-attention-every-action-in-the-universe-creates-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/archives\/3374","title":{"rendered":"When we pay attention, every action in the universe creates data"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"P1130619\"<\/p>\n

We process data everyday – through all of our five (or six?) senses. From hearing the crunching of cocoa beans, smelling the aroma released when the beans are heated, seeing the chocolate being formed, feeling the texture as it enters our mouth, to tasting it as it melts in our mouth, our brain has to deal with an almost limitless amount of information which eventually translates into thoughts, decisions, and emotions. This “data” might seem minimal, but the amount of information processed by our brain is BIG…<\/p>\n

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… here’s an insight into how BIG… The European Commission is currently funding a project to build a supercomputer that will simulate the brain. So far, the project is attempting to simulate a rat’s brain functions. According to this Wired article<\/a>, the project\u2019s first Blue Gene supercomputer was robust enough to simulate a single neocortical column in a rat. FYI, a rat’s brain has an equivalent of about 100,000 columns. The grand vision for the project is to simulate an entire brain\u2019s worth of neurons and will require huge amounts of computing power to make the simulation possible – at least 100 petabytes of memory to run computations (that’s equal to all of Facebook’s data as of 1 February 2012<\/a>) and an exaflop to process it (that’s about\u00a0one million trillion calculations per second<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The research into what many are calling “Big Data” is a growing and fascinating field. Not only is it just about understanding how our brain works (and how to treat neurological illnesses), it’s about tapping into and understanding the world we live in today. With increasingly advanced technology on collecting, processes, and analyzing data, the hope is that we can better address problems, see patterns, and find solutions.<\/p>\n

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Moving in parallel to accessing Big Data is the trend to be able to visualize all this external information so that our brains can process and make sense of it all. Ironically, our brain seems to do very well at processing what it gets from our senses, but when we have to find ways to understand externalized information, like trends in how often a country uses electricity, we need to shape it in a way that our brains can understand. The inaugural edition of Big Data<\/a> has an excellent article and interview On Visualization <\/a>by Dino Citraro, co-founder of Periscopic<\/a>, a socially-conscious data visualization firm that helps companies and organizations promote information transparency and public awareness.<\/p>\n

Here are a couple of my favorite excerpts:<\/p>\n

By revealing patterns in data, we create meaning, we welcome connections, we evoke the encoding channels of symmetry and color, and we tap the visceral mechanics of memory.<\/p>\n

Visualization is merely another tool of communication and it doesn’t mean it’s going to be the only pathway to truth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We process data everyday – through all of our five (or six?) senses. From hearing the crunching of cocoa beans, smelling the aroma released when the beans are heated, seeing the chocolate being formed, feeling the texture as it enters our mouth, to tasting it as it melts in our mouth, our brain has to … Continue reading When we pay attention, every action in the universe creates data<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3375,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[269],"tags":[305,303,25,304,175],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3374"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3374"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3384,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3374\/revisions\/3384"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}