What are the relations between digital cartography and hand-drawn maps?
The science is dividing the field of knowledge into disposable knowledge and reusable knowledge. Google maps are falling into the first category, while axonometric maps belong to the second, because they're suitable for being reused. An 11-year-old hand-drawn map still looks beautiful, whereas 11 years from now Google maps will be dated. Google and others are failing to present the beautifulness of our planet to us when doing their digital atlases.

Are you familiar with Baidu? The Chinese can't show satellite images of their cities so they model these detailed axonometric cityscapes.
Baidu shows very beautiful representations, similar to hand-drawn maps. They're like the depiction of a promise, telling you that it's a beautiful country to live in, whether it's true or not.

Reparieren leicht gemacht (1972), Verlag Das Beste, Stuttgart, 23 x 26 cm, 568 pp
Do you think the actual possibility of processing big datasets will affect other fields of visual design beyond data representation?
The digital has had a great impact not only on the production of information, but also on how to get to the sources. But this speed comes at a cost that shouldn't be underestimated, and that cost is precision. In the early days, information designers controlled the entire process and physically possessed the information. Nowadays, if you're doing a data visualisation using bytes that aren't on your hard drive, or that you don't even own, then you're dependent on other people. That's the digital drawback. The moment authoritarian countries decide to cut the wires, all the knowledge will be gone.

"Really, what’s the difference between fact and fiction? If an engineer or programmer writes a specification for something yet to be constructed or coded – is that fact or fiction? If a science writer for The Guardian tells a story about something that some guy is hoping to achieve in a well-funded corporate lab – is that science fiction or science fact?

…

I don’t want to be pedantic about it, but the influence is arbitrarily predetermined by saying there is some clear distinction between fact and fiction. It’s like apologising for a great sci-fi film because it’s not real. You just don’t do that. You accept things as they are and you let them shape and influence and inform how and what you think about. That’s it. It’s that simple. We shouldn’t pretend to know fact from fiction – embrace them both as ways of trying to explain the world we are in and the world we want in the future.

…

Technology is a reification of culture—it’s a materialization of our rituals, practices and aspirations. It’s not so much a tool or something purely instrumental as it is itself culture. We make it not to do things but as an expression of culture—it just happens to be expressed in things that take batteries or have a screen or require technical specifications, industry standards, FCC approvals and tooling to manufacture.

…

All those things I mention, by the way, are ways of obscuring the ways in which those “things” are really forms of culture. In fact, an industry standard is arbitration amongst a bunch of human engineers who agree by consensus and probably something close to parliamentary rules on how something should work. That’s culture. Technologies in this way construct reality just like any culture constructs reality. It’s the same thing to ask how an Irish Jig or breakfast cereal or any country’s Senate constructs reality."

"The result: vivid maps that offer fresh ways to look at race, traffic, tourism and crime in San Francisco and other cities. Some, like his maps showing the racial makeup of cities throughout the country, have attracted national attention and started a dialogue about continued segregation. Fisher, 37, spoke with Chronicle reporter Will Kane."

"The tighter our connection with the client, the faster things happen. We appreciate that some clients are going to defer to us on every design-related decision, but the smart ones who can call us out and involve themselves in the process are typically more fun to work with. We thrive on fast-paced projects, rapid iteration, and constructive feedback."

"I guess where I was originally going is that nobody wants to write endings in television. They want to sustain the franchise. But if you don't write an ending for a story, you know what you are? You're a hack. You're not a storyteller.

...

We're an urban people. Eighty percent of us live in metro areas. I don't buy the whole Republican convention with its small-town values and 'We represent the real Americans.' I live in Baltimore. I'm concerned with big-city values and I live among real Americans. I could give a fuck about the other 20 percent of the country. I care about how we live together in cities."

"In the beginning, the only way that it really worked is that Chuck Bassett [design partner at SOM] really liked books and acted as a patron. SOM had a wonderful library that was built around his tastes. So he came up one day and looked around and was really pretty excited about what he saw. He then went back and started a library committee to pick books and enhance the SOM library."

"Feynman: They're not. Some manhole covers are square. It's true that there are SOME round ones, but I've seen square ones, and rectangular ones.
Interviewer: But just considering the round ones, why are they round?
Feynman: If we are just considering the round ones, then they are round by definition. That statement is a tautology.
Interviewer: I mean, why are there round ones at all? Is there some particular value to having round ones?
Feynman: Yes. Round covers are used when the hole they are covering up is also round. It's simplest to cover a round hole with a round cover."

"I've been thinking a lot recently about the growing popularity and potential of interactive data visualizations as feedback mechanisms on the world around us. Over the past few weeks, I've had the pleasure of talking with Stamen Design's Tom Carden and Dopplr's Boris Anthony, two talented designers who are both well-steeped in the information visualization space, about why we're starting to see more of them and where they see it all going."

Nora Young of CBC talks to Ben Terrett about Things Our Friends Have Written On The Internet 2008. Weird to hear a voice where previously there was just an email address and a username.