“I was really intrigued by the idea of using live streams of data that’s relevant to real people, and that would allow us to reflect and learn about ourselves.”

Save interesting thoughts, quotations, films, technologies… the medium doesn’t matter, so long as it inspires you.

When I look at a pie chart, I just go numb.

Data can actually make us more human.

I studied at UC Santa Cruz before going on to do a grad program at UCLA. Santa Cruz was like an awesome hippie summer camp. I got to take a vacation from reality and hang out on beaches and in forests.

What’s clear – and exciting – is that communication for social change is growing.

My mom’s a psychologist, and I think that has influenced me on a personal level. Plus, I’m just generally interested in visualization and humanity, social activity and technology, and what happens in aggregate.

Google is famous for making the tiniest changes to pixel locations based on the data it accrues through its tests. Google will always choose a spartan webpage that converts over a beautiful page that doesn’t have the data to back it up.

Data is the fabric of the modern world: just like we walk down pavements, so we trace routes through data, and build knowledge and products out of it.

The plural of anecdotes is not data

People are running huge enterprises off of hacking and stealing data.

I think everyone has to ask, how do companies make their money? Follow the money. And if they’re making money mainly by collecting gobs of personal data, I think you have a right to be worried.

And what is the primary datum? It’s the felt presence of immediate experience. In other words, being here now is the primary datum.

There’s a mountain of information about us. I mean there’s so much. Anyway, I’m not an intelligence person. But I just look at it and it’s a mountain of data.

In every branch of knowledge the progress is proportional to the amount of facts on which to build, and therefore to the facility of obtaining data.