"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." — H. P. Lovecraft, ‘The Call of Cthulhu’, Weird Tales, February 1926.

The past few weeks I’ve been reading the book New Dark Age by James Bridle, and inadvertently my project focus has slowly begun to evolve. The realization that essentially everything we consider our modern world of technology is rooted in the ripple effects of the Second World War was so eye-opening; it wasn’t a mere turn of fate that we made such strides in discovery and innovation, but rather a concerted and forceful effort to pour money into militaristic research … and although those efforts eventually poured into all these other industries that envelop our lives, it appears as if computational thought might ultimately be doomed by its utterly violent origin story.

In my first semester at Parsons, I chose to focus on the phenomenon of ‘entanglement’ that was perpetually occurring between technology and ourselves, our minds, our nervous systems, and our internal landscape. The last few decades have seen such a rapid and pervasive influx of technology into virtually every crevice of the human experience, and there was never really a chance for us to truly consider how that influences us, as in humanity, and our future as humans. Marshall McLuhan said it decades in advance — technologies are “not simply inventions which people employ but are the means by which people are re-invented.”

Technology and digital media have become not only extensions of our minds but rather fully embodied, with the power to shape our sense of identity, relationships, time, memories, and the intrinsic meaning of being human. For my last Major Studio project, I hypothesized that a first step in awareness of this was to bring intentionality and thought into the tools we use, and to no longer rely on them mindlessly.

In New Dark Age, Bridle “[surveys] the history of art, technology and information systems [in order to] reveal the dark clouds that gather over discussions of the digital sublime.” As is evident in my previous posts, I don’t consider myself prone to pessimism about technology in general, yet these themes felt very compelling to me, directly related to my original MS1 focus last semester, and also quite relevant to our semester’s focus on utopias and dystopias.

My new goal, as of now, is to use data visualization to map the evolution of technological progress, revealing chain reactions and hidden connections between key figures, world events, ideas, and inventions — in order to show how history shaped computing and all the technology we rely on today. I envision it being informative and enlightening — a tool that actually spurs realizations and conversation, as well as engaging — encouraging interaction and exploration.

Some of my current design questions:

• Should this be an exploratory visualization (where users find their own path) or a guided narrative?

• What level of complexity is appropriate for different audiences (tech-savvy users, general public, students)?

• How can I leave users with a sense of agency, showing that technology is shaped by human choices, not just inevitable progress?

• How can I make the audience feel the relevance of this history in today’s world?