Jonathan J. Harris is an information designer whose latest work describes the intricacies of global networks and media. His infographics work for Princeton's International Networks Archive includes visualizations of the coming water wars, transportation technologies worldwide, and the global arms trade (like Mark Lombardi, if less opaque).
While in residence at Fabrica communications research centre in Italy, Harris developed 10x10, a picture of recent world news presented as a gridwork of images. Updated hourly, 10x10 currently pulls its images from RSS feeds of Reuters, NYT International, and BBC World,
"...and performs an elaborate process of weighted linguistic analysis on the text contained in their top news stories. After this process, conclusions are automatically drawn about the hour's most important words. The top 100 words are chosen, along with 100 corresponding images, culled from the source news stories. At the end of each day, month, and year, 10x10 looks back through its archives to conclude the top 100 words for the given time period. In this way, a constantly evolving record of our world is formed, based on prominent world events, without any human input."
"The result is an often moving, sometimes shocking, occasionally frivolous, but always fitting snapshot of our world... Over the course of days, months, and years, 10x10 leaves a trail of these hourly statements which, stitched together side by side, form a continuous patchwork tapestry of human life."
(via eyebeam reblog)
