Puddles in Australia

Nathan Yau of FLOWINGDATA provides us with the "Best Data Visualization Projects of 2019".

Check out his work, it is awesome.

Visualization is a relatively new field, but we seem to be developing an understanding of what it is and what it can be used for. This year, we refined existing methods. With less emphasis on novelty of visual forms, we focused more on what we wanted to communicate.

He does prove his first sentence wrong with his first example, "Best Blend of New and Vintage" with the 3D elevation + 1878 USGS Yellowstone Geology Map.  

Here's a map from 1878 of my ancestors near Buck Lake. (Not in 3D)

1878 Map Of Loughborough

Notice the visualizations of lot numbers, landowner names, all nicely laid out in somewhat-to-scale quadrants of land ownership. 

The field of Visualization is as old as cave drawings, or pictographs, and carvings, or petroglyphs.  Take Milestones in the History of Thematic Cartography, Statistical Graphics, and Data Visualization for example.  If you type that title out you will probably get carpal tunnel syndrome.  It could probably be better described with a pictogram or symbol.

eye with apple slicer, 2020, some pictogram artist

The earliest known map, Çatalhöyük, which of course is disputed, is a Babylonian clay tablet with a nice 3D visualization.  And it isn't even a map.  My Cartocacoethes is kicking in again.

RIP Australian puddle map, is this Sudan or Australia?

Speaking of Australian puddle maps, another example on the FlowingData web site is Climate Coverage by The New York Times.  With augmented reality view.  I suppose you can make an example that this is a visualization which could only have happened in the last decade?  Searching for 16th century augmented reality, Google comes through again with An Eerie Augmented Reality Illusion from the 1850s is Still Being Used Today.  

Smoke and mirrors, still in use today by climate change deniers.  Mostly the smoke part.

I really like the Best Comic Chart winner, Something's Wrong.  

Fund him on Patreon.com/WillikinWolf

The CPI should have been added to this chart.  

Since all things revert to the mean I would expect that productivity will start going down and level out with wages once we get our robot overlords in place. Patreon has a great example of the job titles of the future, which of course we are now living in.

Podcaster

Video Creator

Musician

Visual Artist

Writer & Journalist

Community Coordinator

Gaming Creator

Nonprofit

Tutor and Educator

Creator-of-all-kinds

My 7-year-old asked me to setup his web site, which really means Youtube Channel to him.  Unlike the boomers who think that the internet is Internet Explorer, and a Relational Database is something hosted inside Internet Explorer, this generation will think that old-school television is Netflix, and the internet is some kind of I Can Has CHEEZburger meme browser running in your television next to Netflix.

Eventually this will revert to the mean and tools like IRC and Gopher will come back to us.  

What the crap? There's a Gophercon?  That would explain all the ASCII & ANSI art generators which are getting more popular.

I can't wait for squealie modems to come back to us.

I expect the 2020 visualization winner to be some ANSI terminal art depicting the trend of vandalizing web sites by setting their baud rates to 2400bps.