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Being with Data. Nathaniel TkaczЧитать онлайн книгу.

Being with Data - Nathaniel Tkacz


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realizes this relation is of course contingent and can only be determined empirically, but an attempt to do so is written into dashboard design. In fact, as I hope to show, it is in part through the development of the dashboard as a format that this particular way of being with data emerged. That is, the very idea that data can be brought together on a single display as a cognitive aid, and can change along with the unfolding of a situation, is heavily indebted to the format of the dashboard.14

      Figure 0.3 Screenshot of image search query results for *dashboard*.

      Source: Author.

      What kind of thing is a dashboard? Beyond an initial definition (data, display, cognitive function), what category of thing does it belong to? What kind of conceptual apparatus is able to handle its specificity; its diverse historical threads and peculiar ontological status? Because a dashboard mediates our relation to data, should we approach it as a medium? Or is it only one component of a medium or larger system? Is it to be understood instead as an interface, or perhaps as software? A dashboard may very well fit definitions of all these things and I will draw on them throughout the discussion as appropriate.

      The rise of the computer as a metamedium has also resulted in a shifting of focus regarding the territories of inquiry, which no longer adhere to the categories of analogue media (print, television, radio etc.). Manovich and others suggested a focus on software, while hardware, infrastructure, networks, platforms and interfaces have also all emerged as distinct areas of inquiry. These have not emerged through a master plan and thus they criss-cross and overlap in any number of ways. Software may include or even be an interface, while a platform may include hardware, software, infrastructure, interfaces and so on, plus a business model. I have no interest in redrawing the boundaries of these territories, but I do want to stress that despite any overlap, each does different kinds of intellectual work and makes possible forms of inquiry that at some point go in different directions. Each has its own historical trajectories, is attached to different forms of expertise and has its own privileged objects. All this is to note that there are methodological ramifications for assigning these terms to the things that spark our interest.

      Contemporary dashboards are typically digital media and thus fall under the many logics of the ‘metamedium’. They are comprised of software and hardware; they have an infrastructure, including the aforementioned user-facing software and hardware as well as ‘background’ information systems or cloud services; they are typically networked; they may be found on platforms, be fed by platform data or otherwise be part of platform strategies; and they are constituted by a number of interfaces, with the graphical display the most visible and relevant for the current inquiry. Each of these elements of dashboards is significant in its own right and I will lean on them from time to time.

      As the inquiry developed, I increasingly found myself thinking with another term, not unrelated to ‘interface’ and ‘software’ or the other terms mentioned, but one that seems untroubled by the dashboard’s peculiar history or by the fact that dashboards can be comprised of radically different configurations of technology. More importantly, the term more strongly connotes what it is a dashboard does. Whatever else a dashboard is, I want to suggest it is a format. A dashboard is a format and the work it does is one of formatting.

      1 the way in which something is arranged or set out;

      2 the shape, size and presentation of a book or periodical;

      3 computing:


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