Giorgia Lupi

This is no ordinary data science book. Speak Data is the first pop nonfiction book to explore the definition of data and its impacts on our daily lives. Insightful ideas and colorful data illustrations by award-winning information designer Giorgia Lupi guide you from one observation and revelation to the next."Data is almost anything, because almost anything can get recorded. But it’s kind of a magical thing—potentially one of the most powerful things humans have ever done." —James Clear, author of Atomic Habits Today we are told that data is everywhere, from the smartphones in our pockets to the satellites in space. But what is data, really? What role does it play in our lives? And why should anyone care? Through inspiring illustrations and a fresh, accessible approach, Speak Data invites us to see data differently—not just as numbers on a screen or tick marks in a chart, but as a language to help us better understand each other and the world around us. Seventeen thought-provoking conversations with leaders in business, tech, medicine, psychology, health, art, and more explore the human side of data, unpacking its powerful ability to divulge patterns, tell stories, stir emotion, and illuminate complexity. While often stereotyped as abstract or intimidating, here data is revealed as something far different: personal, nuanced, and above all, human made. Featuring: Tech pioneer John Maeda on the value of data visualization during global emergencies. Marketing legend Seth Godin on how to use data to get people to really care about climate change. Museum curator Paola Antonelli on whether data is art. Atomic Habits author James Clear on the ways data can (and can’t) describe human identity. AI data artist Refik Anadol on how big datasets can dream. And many more. In this uniquely interdisciplinary study, authors Giorgia Lupi and Phillip Cox present data as a vocabulary that anyone can use and that anyone can understand. If we learn to truly “speak data,” we can open up new worlds of meaning for ourselves and everything around us.

Equal parts mail art, data visualization, and affectionate correspondence, Dear Data celebrates "the infinitesimal, incomplete, imperfect, yet exquisitely human details of life," in the words of Maria Popova (Brain Pickings), who introduces this charming and graphically powerful book. For one year, Giorgia Lupi, an Italian living in New York, and Stefanie Posavec, an American in London, mapped the particulars of their daily lives as a series of hand-drawn postcards they exchanged via mail weekly--small portraits as full of emotion as they are data, both mundane and magical. Dear Data reproduces in pinpoint detail the full year's set of cards, front and back, providing a remarkable portrait of two artists connected by their attention to the details of their lives--including complaints, distractions, phone addictions, physical contact, and desires. These details illuminate the lives of two remarkable young women and also inspire us to map our own lives, including specific suggestions on what data to draw and how. A captivating and unique book for designers, artists, correspondents, friends, and lovers everywhere.

This book investigates novel methods and technologies for the collection, analysis and representation of real-time user-generated data at the urban scale in order to explore potential scenarios for more participatory design, planning and management processes. For this purpose, the authors present a set of experiments conducted in collaboration with urban stakeholders at various levels (including citizens, city administrators, urban planners, local industries and NGOs) in Milan and New York in 2012. It is examined whether geo-tagged and user-generated content can be of value in the creation of meaningful, real-time indicators of urban quality, as it is perceived and communicated by the citizens. The meanings that people attach to places are also explored to discover what such an urban semantic layer looks like and how it unfolds over time. As a conclusion, recommendations are proposed for the exploitation of user-generated content in order to answer hitherto unsolved urban questions. Readers will find in this book a fascinating exploration of techniques for mining the social web that can be applied to procure user-generated content as a means of investigating urban dynamics.