Omaha finally stopped taking glass recently but continues to convince me that I should put my aluminum, tin, and plastic in the 18X24X18 tub.  I don’t know what they do with it after they take it away, but I have been bludgeoned over the head with the idea of recycling for so long that I do so willingly and breath in an extra big gulp of fresh air that I am helping to preserve. 

I have heard that much of the plastic ends up going to the landfill anyway because it is the kind of plastic that can’t be re-used or because it contains contaminants from holding toxic liquids, or even food residue which is too costly to remove.  At least Omaha has not imposed or suggested what some other communities have attempted to do to combat this problem.  It seems like ludicrous behaviour to me, but a quick search of the internet finds literally dozens of municipal waste sites that encourage their citizens to not only rinse their recyclable, but to run them through the dishwasher before taking them to the curb.

Set aside your awareness that the energy used to run the dishwasher for 90 minutes far exceeds the gains of potentially reusing the plastic, and you are still left with what happens to the contaminants that flow down the drain.  As if no-one will have to deal with that.  It’s a microcosm of society today that I truly believed I wasn’t taking part in but some people are living a cliché everyday called “out of sight, out of mind”.  More on that later.

Back to the bins.  The tin is negligible in its value as a reusable product particularly when I force its re-use through my tax dollars in the form of a recycling plant.  I would be doing the world a much greater service by taking the tin to a recycler myself.

Which leads us to the most ridiculous act of all; Aluminum recycling.  We are such a throw away society that we put something on the curb that we could just as easily take to someone willing to pay us for it.  You wouldn’t dream of tossing a $2 dollar bill in the trash, yet we do it almost every week in the form of soda and beer cans (consumption will vary).

Businesses throw millions of dollars at systems  that don’t do what they were intended or under-deliver on functionality.  When they realize this, it’s too late and so they continue to muddle through for a number of years until the system is retired.  Often, businesses repeat the process all over again and cross their fingers that they got it right this time.

 The carpenter is the one who experiences a real loss here, but we all suffer when big business continues to drive up the bottom line with poor decision making.

 Measure Twice, Cut Once

The eyeball is in fact nearly blind but for the exact spot our attention is drawn.  We can certainly see things outside of that range including nearly 90 degrees to the left and right in our peripheral vision, but those things outside of our direct attention are just blurry blobs.  What gives us enough information to turn those blurry blobs into something recognizable is our memory.  We actually fill in what we can’t see with information we stored the last time we looked at that object.  Between the blob in our periphery and our memory of the object, we have just enough context to make out a setting.

Within my physiology lesson on how the human body works I want to drive home a point about how this helps us in building interfaces and visual displays on the computer.  Paramount to this is the fact that we know how effortless it is to dart our eyes from one place to another.  Instead of focusing on a spot and trying to take in the things around it, much less effort is exerted by simply moving our eyes.  Adding to this is the ability to add color, motion, size or a combination of these features in order to gain recognition advantage.

Data deceives by using the wrong colors or hues, misusing borders, improper orientation of text, too heavy gridlines, or occlusion.  These only touch the surface of common mistakes made with the improper use of display data.  Overcoming these mistakes can be achieved by understanding which type of visualization works best within a certain situation and the strengths of the charting method used within it.

We are all familiar with the common data encoding items like dots, lines, bars, boxes and the typical array of graphing widgets used everywhere.  Understanding the situations where they are used best is the key to turning numbers into usable quantitative data.  Learning these situational practices, like using lines to show change, or boxes to compare is what puts power behind a visualization.

The next steps in making search better have begun in many applications by hierarchically filtering documents on user defined levels.  Users can accomplish much by placing a topic within a context or frame of mind by simply going to a site then searching.  Google for instance, allows us to see more about a site before we must click and go, and we can even search across source and time.

The next generation of search tools for decision making will involve Text Analytics or “Statistics over Statements”.  This is impossible without some form of linguistic analysis.  We should all be familiar with the concept that we “have eyes for text”; meaning that we can find important pieces of information quite easily by simply scanning paragraphs of text.  We have the ability to pick out words that mean something to us like buy, free, sex, and our own name.  If we are able to put ourselves in a frame of mind or context, we can dig deeper into the scanning of text to go beyond those things that we all see naturally.  Linguistic Analysis attempts to do this for us; looking at searches as language, not just text.  The flow of information in Linguistic Analysis begins with the access or search, analyzes the results, becomes aware of the results within a context, points out relevance, categorizes the data for reporting and alerting and provides feedback in the form of a visualization.

The most common mistake that today’s software makes when it comes time to build a visualization is that it sacrifices simplicity for complexity.  In a way this has developed in large part because of the way the human brain works.  We are drawn to those things that are more difficult, bigger, or more complex.  The same applies when we find ourselves saying things like “that was too easy”, rejecting our work and starting over.  Almost always finding out that the first attempt was correct. 

Software has attempted over the years to make things easier which in most cases has only made things worse.  Visualizations in software generally involve adding features like chart wizards, canned views, 3-D graphics, and colors that lie.  All of which make an already difficult problem even worse, because they all focus on the visualization rather than the data.  Even when all of your analysis is done and you are ready to build a chart, you have to go directly back to the data and forget momentarily about the analysis in order to get that visualization.  If the visualization we get from the canned process isn’t what we were trying to achieve, we must start over and try again.

I’m not saying I am a geek or that I could be convinced of being one, I just don’t really know what a geek is or why someone would call ME, of all people a geek.  If I am a geek who are the non-geeks?  Someone who is not smart?  Not intelligent?  Not innovative?  I’m not sure…

If I have a name to describe me, then the non-geeks need a name that describes what they are.

• At first, I found some references to Ords, Norms, and Mundanes, but these just sounds derogatory and not very innovative.
• TechnoTards, still too derogatory…
• What about Muggles?  You know, the people from Harry Potter incapable of performing Magic?
• Spongeys is nice, but then I could be giving the non-geek too much credit.
• Streamers is a good play on the word main-stream; I like it.
• I love a nice acronym.  How about TIMOTS – Technology Inept Members of Today’s Society
• Tweeds – Old Fashioned, Stiff, Rough, Traditional, Non-Innovating
• Sleeple, Yes!
• Sheeple, Double Yes!

At this point, I know I am really on to something here so to find just that right word, I can’t get hung up on trying not to be derogatory.  I mean, there are certainly people who refer to geeks in a loving, cuddly kind of way, but for the most part, I doubt folks are really giving us a compliment.

Finally, I need to break down the word geek in order to more accurately categorize what a non-geek is.   A geek is an information worker or someone who works in technology.  Most non-geeks pretty much lump us all together into a single category regardless of our specific area of expertise.  That’s fine.  They likely wouldn’t understand anyway.  Engineer, Analyst, Admin are all preceded by the word “System”, so I can see how this happens. 

As far as the non-geeks are concerned, geeks are people who work on computers, building programs and software for the rest of the world to “use”    …Wait a minute… I’ve got it! 

Lusers

I have been an artist, a chef, a bartender, and even a telemarketer, and then I graduated from college.  During the first phase of my IT career, I was a PC Specialist, Systems Analyst, Systems Engineer, Systems Administrator, Network Services Coordinator and Director of Technology.  Recently, I flipped a house, dabbled in carpentry, finished my Masters degree and was even a stay-at-home dad.  Today, I am back in IT, but no-matter the title or job description; I like to think of myself as an Information Architect. 

Information Architects typically give order to data by arranging it hierarchically and logically in the hopes of providing a basis for understanding. Unfortunately, what happens in between is much more organic.  Outcomes created by traditional methods fall short of expectations.  Many domains do not function well when lacking rules that can be easily applied, and so Information Technology, as it is commonly understood, fails to bring about the order we desire.  Creativity however, thrives in this environment; where concepts are evident but not strictly followed.  The natural surfacing of engagement, context and reference can lead to identification and therefore maximum transfer of knowledge to occur. 

Information IS Architecture.  Information architects, like architects in the physical world, create a structure and a basis for identifying relationships.  This architecture is a starting point that eventually leads to an outward appearance known in the physical world as a building, but known logically as a presentation.  Presentations can be entertaining, display theatre, evoke movement, and display emotion.  From the personal moments experienced in a presentation, we form an identity that can cause us to return to it time and again through memory.  Ultimately we achieve an understanding of who we are and what our surroundings represent as we grow.