i202 Fall 2010 School of Information, UC Berkeley

Even a legendary visionary like Vannevar Bush might have been taken aback had he visited the VMworld conference held last week.
 Three ideas that will enable the seamless flow of information, that integrate humans with the world of digital data. There are no definite boundaries anymore. Are we becoming like human  computers , or are they becoming computer humans!

In his legendary TED talk, Hans Rosling, a global health researcher from Sweden, presents a tool called "Gapminder" which uses a simple and intuitive visualization of complex macroecononmic information to clearly point out particular global trends. This tool (available online) has access to a bulk of information about almost all countries in the world regarding GDP, HIV, CO2 emissions etc. starting from 1800. Rosling successfully bridges the gap by providing an interactive interface that allows the exporation of vast data sets in an intuitive and entertaining way.