Artfully visualizing our humanity

     When I first started watching this video, I was a little upset to be honest. The reason I was upset was because the video sounded like it was going to be the most uninteresting and boring video to watch ever. I began watching the video and yes I was upset, like I said, but as this genius, Aaron Koblin, started talking, I slowly got drawn in to what he was trying to explain to his audience. The first thing he said was that data can actually make us more human. It sounded pretty cool, but i really didn't know what he meant until the video proceeded and explained. "We are collecting all kinds of data about how we are living our lives and it is enabling us to create some pretty cool series." There was a post by a wise media theorist that stated, the 19th century culture was defined by the novel, the 20th century culture was defined by cinema, and the culture of the 21st century will be defined by the interface. Aaron has been working on some projects over the past few years and some of the things he came up with were very cool. The airplane traffic showed all the flights over North America that are in flight over a period of time.It was very interesting to actually see how many planes are out at one time though the United States. These technological experiments/art forms show us just how busy and technological we as humans are, and how data can be collected to do pretty much anything, such as reading the minds of humans. The other projects, such as viewing communication among cities, through phones and other communication devices and the sheep drawing, show us how digital we are and how we can turn little annoying sounds made by a large group of people into a musical piece. I knew already that our culture today couldn't live without technology and and all this data, but I didn't realize how technologically savvy some people are. There are many pros and cons to how our culture is evolving into all technology but I do know that it is very cool and interesting to see all the things that can be done through the collecting of data. The interface is the message.