Scrolling through Digg this afternoon and found this article about the media's evergreen fascination/reliance on infographics, "Hard Data: The Erotics of Infographics" by Ben Lee.
While I think it's more than a little silly/stupid to frame how the media feels about infographics as an erotic fixation (the pull quotes found by Mr. Lee are pretty damn thirsty, though), I do find the following he wrote to be interesting food-for-thought:
Claims about the “power” of data have crept into every facet of our lives, well beyond just media and business: better recommendations online will make us happier; individual health tracking will increase our lifespans. Given that information visualization is the very practice by which these unhinged promises of data are brought to life and imbued with color and shape, an erotics of infographics is not only consequential but central to the proliferation of these promises. Infographics are a powerful aphrodisiac for ingratiating us to data’s supposed power. The erotics of infographics transmutes the experience of interpreting data – typically portrayed as a cold, sterile, clinical, and objective form of analysis – to one rife with thrill and stimulation.
While I can't speak for the media folks, I know for me it's not the cool sexy allure that draws me towards data in picture format - it's that it speaks to the geekier, ASD part of my heart. Yet that always been there, at least since I was five years old and started grabbing any almanac or encyclopedia I could get my tiny grubby hands on. So if it's got something to do with "erotics," sure, neat, whatever. But I know it's got to be something more that just data fetishism.
(Of course, I could've also been reading this article all wrong - I did start glazing over it during the second half, The writer, true to his bio's note that he's a PhD candidate, gets a little too much into Academic Wonkitude for my taste.)
With that all being said, I do have a folder in my Downloads as of this writing titled "Infographics from Reddit" and now's a great time to share some of my favorites!
Enjoy 😆 - A.B. 6/27/2022
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