HERE IS TODAY: An interactive look at time
Information visualisation created in HTML5 by designer Luke Twyman.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Pablo Ferro: graphic designer and film titles designer
"for over 40 years, Pablo has been putting his stamp on the moving image through works such as the opening of Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove and the revolutionary split-screen montage of 1963's The Thomas Crown Affair. He has also created the opening titles for Hal Ashby's Being There (1979) and Gus Van Sant's To Die For (1995)."
(Art of the Title)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
The University of Sheffield Arts Tower paternoster lift
"The Arts Tower's paternoster lift has 38 carriages which could make it the largest of the few surviving paternosters in the UK, and possibly the largest in the world.
A paternoster is a lift made up of a chain of open carriages, each for two people, that move in a loop up and down the building without stopping. The cars travel slowly enough so that passengers can step on or off at any floor they like.
Paternoster lift in action
When you get to the very top or the very bottom of the building, the cars move horizontally across before continuing vertically upwards or downwards and at this point, everything goes dark while you travel behind the wall (rather than in the open air as happens during the rest of the journey).
You can also get around the Arts Tower by normal elevator, and stairs of course - but there are 20 storeys to the building so it's a fit and brave person who decides to walk to the top by staircase!"
(BBC South Yorkshire, 19/09/2008)
Fig.1 James Benedict Brown "University of Sheffield Arts Tower Paternoster", Uploaded on 22 Dec 2007.
Fig.2 Richard France (16 April 2012) [http://www.flickr.com/photos/richardfrance/7103541017/].
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Can Histories Be True? Narrativism, Positivism, and the MetaphoricalTurn
"Narrativism, as represented by Hayden White and Frank Ankersmit, can fruitfully be analyzed as an inversion of two brands of positivism. First, narrativist epistemology can be regarded as an inversion of empiricism. Its thesis that narratives function as metaphors which do not possess a cognitive content is built on an empiricist, 'picture view' of knowledge. Moreover, all the non-cognitive aspects attributed as such are dependent on this picture theory of knowledge and a picture theory of representation. Most of the epistemological characteristics that White and Ankersmit attribute to historical narratives therefore share the problems of this picture theory.
The article's second thesis is that the theories of narrative explanation can also fruitfully be analyzed as inversions of positivist covering-law theory. Ankersmit's brand of narrativism is the most radical in this respect because it posits an opposition between narrative and causal modes of comprehension while simultaneously eliminating causality from narrativist historical understanding. White's brand of narrativism is more of a hybrid than is Ankersmit's as far as its theory of explanation is concerned; nevertheless, it can also be fruitfully interpreted as an inversion of covering-law theory, replacing it by an indefinite multitude of explanatory strategies.
Most of the striking characteristics of both White's and Ankersmit's narrativism pre-suppose positivism in these two senses, especially their claim that historical narratives have a metaphorical structure and therefore no truth-value. These claims are had to reconcile with the factual characteristics of debates by historians; this problem can be tracked down to the absence in 'metaphorical' narrativism of a conceptual connection between historical narratives and historical research."
(Chris Lorenz, 1998, Wiley-Blackwell)
Lorenz, C. (1998). "Can Histories Be True? Narrativism, Positivism, and the "MetaphoricalTurn"." History and Theory 37(3): 309-329.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
With Enough Data, the Numbers Speak for Themselves...
"Not a chance. The promoters of big data would like us to believe that behind the lines of code and vast databases lie objective and universal insights into patterns of human behavior, be it consumer spending, criminal or terrorist acts, healthy habits, or employee productivity. But many big-data evangelists avoid taking a hard look at the weaknesses. Numbers can't speak for themselves, and data sets -- no matter their scale -- are still objects of human design. The tools of big-data science, such as the Apache Hadoop software framework, do not immunize us from skews, gaps, and faulty assumptions. Those factors are particularly significant when big data tries to reflect the social world we live in, yet we can often be fooled into thinking that the results are somehow more objective than human opinions. Biases and blind spots exist in big data as much as they do in individual perceptions and experiences. Yet there is a problematic belief that bigger data is always better data and that correlation is as good as causation."
(Kate Crawford, 12 May 2013, Foreign Policy)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
