Computers, Visualization, and History


Book Description

This visionary and thoroughly accessible book examines how digital environments and virtual reality have altered the ways historians think and communicate ideas and how the new language of visualization transforms our understanding of the past. Drawing on familiar graphic models--maps, flow charts, museum displays, films--the author shows how images can often convey ideas and information more efficiently and accurately than words.




Computers, Visualization, and History


Book Description

This visionary and thoroughly accessible book examines how digital environments and virtual reality have altered the ways historians think and communicate ideas and how the new language of visualization transforms our understanding of the past. Drawing on familiar graphic models--maps, flow charts, museum displays, films--the author shows how images can often convey ideas and information more efficiently and accurately than words. With emerging digital technology, these images will become more sophisticated, manipulable, and multidimensional, and provide historians with new tools and environments to construct historical narratives. Moving beyond the traditional book based on linear narrative, digital scholarship based on visualization and hypertext will offer multiple perspectives, dimensions, and experiences that transform the ways historians work and people imagine and learn about history. This second edition of Computers, Visualization, and History features expanded coverage of such topics as sequential narratives, 3-D modeling, simulation, and video games, as well as our theoretical understanding of space and immersive experience. The author has also added "Guidelines for Visual Composition in History" for history and social studies teachers who wish to use technology for student assignments. Also new to the second edition is a web link feature that users of the digital edition can use to enhance visualization within the text.




The History of Visual Magic in Computers


Book Description

If you have ever looked at a fantastic adventure or science fiction movie, or an amazingly complex and rich computer game, or a TV commercial where cars or gas pumps or biscuits behaved liked people and wondered, “How do they do that?”, then you’ve experienced the magic of 3D worlds generated by a computer. 3D in computers began as a way to represent automotive designs and illustrate the construction of molecules. 3D graphics use evolved to visualizations of simulated data and artistic representations of imaginary worlds. In order to overcome the processing limitations of the computer, graphics had to exploit the characteristics of the eye and brain, and develop visual tricks to simulate realism. The goal is to create graphics images that will overcome the visual cues that cause disbelief and tell the viewer this is not real. Thousands of people over thousands of years have developed the building blocks and made the discoveries in mathematics and science to make such 3D magic possible, and The History of Visual Magic in Computers is dedicated to all of them and tells a little of their story. It traces the earliest understanding of 3D and then foundational mathematics to explain and construct 3D; from mechanical computers up to today’s tablets. Several of the amazing computer graphics algorithms and tricks came of periods where eruptions of new ideas and techniques seem to occur all at once. Applications emerged as the fundamentals of how to draw lines and create realistic images were better understood, leading to hardware 3D controllers that drive the display all the way to stereovision and virtual reality.




Technologies of History


Book Description

Captain Kirk fought Nazis. JFK's assassination is a videogame touchstone. And there's no history like "Drunk History."







Toward the Visualization of History


Book Description

Over the past 50 years, the influence of visuals has impacted society with greater frequency. No subject is immune from the power of visual culture, and this fact becomes especially pronounced with regards to history and historical discourse. Where once the study of the past was books and printed articles, the environment has changed and students now enter the lecture hall with a sense of history that has been gleaned from television, film, photography, and other new media. They come to understand history based on what they have seen and heard, not what they have read. What are the implications of this process, this visualization of history? Mark Moss discusses the impact of visuals on the study of history with an examination of visual culture and the future of print. Recognizing the visual bias of the younger generations and using this as a starting point for teaching history is a critical component for reaching students. By providing an analysis of photography, film, television, and computer culture, Moss uses the Holocaust as an historical case study to illustrate the ways in which visual culture can be used to bring about an awareness of history, as well as the potential for visual culture becoming a driving force for social and cultural change.




The Computer in the Visual Arts


Book Description

For anyone interested in how computers are used in art and design, this introduction to computer graphics is uniquely focused on the computer as a medium for artistic expression and graphic communication.




A History of Data Visualization and Graphic Communication


Book Description

A comprehensive history of data visualization—its origins, rise, and effects on the ways we think about and solve problems. With complex information everywhere, graphics have become indispensable to our daily lives. Navigation apps show real-time, interactive traffic data. A color-coded map of exit polls details election balloting down to the county level. Charts communicate stock market trends, government spending, and the dangers of epidemics. A History of Data Visualization and Graphic Communication tells the story of how graphics left the exclusive confines of scientific research and became ubiquitous. As data visualization spread, it changed the way we think. Michael Friendly and Howard Wainer take us back to the beginnings of graphic communication in the mid-seventeenth century, when the Dutch cartographer Michael Florent van Langren created the first chart of statistical data, which showed estimates of the distance from Rome to Toledo. By 1786 William Playfair had invented the line graph and bar chart to explain trade imports and exports. In the nineteenth century, the “golden age” of data display, graphics found new uses in tracking disease outbreaks and understanding social issues. Friendly and Wainer make the case that the explosion in graphical communication both reinforced and was advanced by a cognitive revolution: visual thinking. Across disciplines, people realized that information could be conveyed more effectively by visual displays than by words or tables of numbers. Through stories and illustrations, A History of Data Visualization and Graphic Communication details the 400-year evolution of an intellectual framework that has become essential to both science and society at large.




Visualizing Film History


Book Description

Though many archival digital objects were not "born digital," film archives are now becoming important resources for digital scholarship as a consequence of digitization. Moreover, with advancements in digital research methods involving video annotation, visual analysis, and GIS affecting the way we look at archival films' material, stylistic histories and circulation, new research practices are more important than ever. Visualizing Film History is an accessible introduction to archive-based digital scholarship in film and media studies and beyond. With a combined focus on the history of film historiography, archiving, and recent digital scholarship—covering a period from the "first wave" of film archiving in the early 1900s to recent data art—this book proposes ways to work critically with digitized archives and research methods. Christian Olesen encourages a shift towards new critical practices in the field with an in-depth assessment of and critical approach to doing film historiography with the latest digital tools and digitized archives. Olesen argues that if students, scholars and archivists are to fully realize the potential of emerging digital tools and methodologies, they must critically consider the roles that data analysis, visualization, interfaces and procedural human-machinery interactions play in producing knowledge in current film historical research. If we fail to do so, we risk losing our ability to critically navigate and renew contemporary research practices and evaluate the results of digital scholarship.




Software Visualization


Book Description

Software Visualization: From Theory to Practice was initially selected as a special volume for "The Annals of Software Engineering (ANSE) Journal", which has been discontinued. This special edited volume, is the first to discuss software visualization in the perspective of software engineering. It is a collection of 14 chapters on software visualization, covering the topics from theory to practical systems. The chapters are divided into four Parts: Visual Formalisms, Human Factors, Architectural Visualization, and Visualization in Practice. They cover a comprehensive range of software visualization topics, including *Visual programming theory and techniques for rapid software prototyping and graph visualization, including distributed programming; *Visual formalisms such as Flowchart, Event Graph, and Process Communication Graph; *Graph-oriented distributed programming; *Program visualization for software understanding, testing/debugging and maintenance; *Object-oriented re-design based on legacy procedural software; *Cognitive models for designing software exploration tools; *Human comprehensibility of visual modeling diagrams in UML; *UML extended with pattern compositions for software reuse; *Visualization of software architecture and Web architecture for better understanding; *Visual programming and program visualization for music synthesizers; *Drawing diagrams nicely using clustering techniques for software engineering.