IN THE BUBBLE JOHN THACKARA - witz cultural

164 Chapter 8
of paper, most of it kept above deck for ready reference; this raised the
ship’s center of gravity so much that its speed, maneuverability, and
fuel economy were adversely affected. When the time came to build the
Space Station Freedom, the only way to measure the amount of documentation
required was not by quantity, but by cost: a billion dollars for
documentation—5 percent of its total cost. 5
Top-heavy warships, and warplanes that could not take off while carrying
their own manual, were among the main drivers of the digitization of
technical documentation. But this dematerialization of technical data has
accelerated its growth. We now produce between one and two billion gigabytes
of original information per year—roughly 250 megabytes for every
man, woman, and child on the planet. In 2002 alone, five exabytes of new
information—roughly five billion gigabytes—was created: That’s like half a
million libraries as big as the previously mentioned print collections of the
Library of Congress. 6 Over a three-year period, we create significantly more
information than has been created since the beginning of time. 7
Vital Signs
Some of the scientists who helped unleash this data explosion are well
aware of the dangers and want to fix the problem. One of these, computer
scientist Danny Hillis, says we need ‘‘more signal, and less noise.’’ 8 A longrunning
attempt to capture the biggest picture began when NASA launched
the first civilian Earth observation satellite, Landsat, in 1972. This complex
project was the fruit of governments’ enthusiasm to peer down on Earth
to monitor its atmosphere, oceans, forests, and deserts. The trouble is that
although governments are always keen to know more about areas of the
planet under their control—or about the location of natural resources in
areas they do not—they are not yet inclined to be interested in, let alone
take responsibility for, the whole. 9
What would it mean to monitor our planet’s signs in real time? Would
it be feasible to design perceptual aids to help us to understand the invisible
natural systems that surround us? In Germany, a design group called
ArtþCom has an interface ready and waiting. This interface, called T-
Vision, generates the entire face of the Earth out of topographical data and
satellite images. Using a level of detail to manage scenic complexity, the
work presents a model of Earth as seen from a million kilometers above its