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From an evolutionary perspective, excessive optimism is generally a bad idea. After all, if you're constantly assuming good things will happen, you'll probably be ill-prepared when bad things inevitably come along. Now scientists have an explanation...which isn't exactly flattering to the eternally optimistic. More »
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Even by the normal standards of quantum weirdness, this one is really out there. You can take a piece of quantum information and only teach half to another person...but you'll never be able to figure out which half they learned. More »
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The internet preserves unimaginable amounts of data, including huge amounts of minutiae describing people's everyday lives. So here's the question: is this information worth saving for future generations to study, or is this the sort of data that's best forgotten? More »
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The laws of thermodynamics tell us that all work requires energy. But a recent demonstration used only information, not energy, to control electric potential, apparently violating the laws of thermodynamics. Here's how they did it. More »
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This map breaks down the overall touristyness of the globe by gauging the concentration of Panoramio photos. Big surprise - Panoramio users don't holiday in Siberia. [bluemoon.ee via Information is Beautiful] More »
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In Brian Moore's update of WWII propaganda posters, nations are brought down not by armies and guns, but by blogs and tweets. Hang one up and show your support for net neutrality, Wikipedia, and information pirates. More »
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You may be an internet celebrity today, but in 50 years nobody will remember you — not because your star faded, but because literally nobody can watch your YouTube vids. If you’ve ever lost all your digital photos in a computer crash or struggled to open a docx file in Windows 2004, you know that digital media isn’t always the best way to store and transfer information. Now information scientists are concerned that so much of our information and art is tied up in digital media, a huge portion of our cultural legacy could soon be lost forever. More »
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You can watch the American presidential debates and allow Barack Obama and John McCain to move you emotionally, or you can convert what they say into easily-analyzed data structures. C-SPAN's awesomely wonky graphic designers have created several easy ways for you to analyze as objectively as possible which candidate spoke the longest, interrupted the most, and used the word "taxes" more often. At left, you can see their word frequency chart, looking at which words were used most and when. We also have part of an elaborate chart showing which candidate grandstanded the most on various topics. More »
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Edward Tufte is the guy who summed up the field of information design in one amazing book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. He's also a sculptor, and last year conceived this behemoth scrap steel piece, called Rocket Science. This is the giant nose of it. Want to see the rest? More »
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