Singularity, a word that has countless meanings and interpretations but some far more complicated than the others. Advances in social technological and economic areas push human abilities to its limits each an everyday in the race against each other to become the best in the universe. According to MIT Press, a singularity is when artificial intelligence or cognitively enhanced biological intelligence outrun humans or any living forms (Shanahan, 2015). Also, availability, processing and understanding of data and information in real time (Järvilehto, 2011) reach 100%, between life forms, machines and artificial intelligence(AI) is also known as a singularity where the whole world is one massive collective superintelligence. Although both definitions and countless other similar definitions appears to be true, as a creative technologist I would like to propose my own definition towards the idea of singularity.

 

“A singularity is when availability, accessibility and accuracy of big data reach 100% where life forms, machines and artificial intelligence share a common collective superintelligence. “

 

The purpose of this project is to demonstrate the sheer volume of data by visualising data transmission between a device (smartphone) and Internet for a controlled period of time. This project falls in to three main areas and Visualization (Art), Engineering (ICT/Science) and Big Data.      

 

The concept of data visualisation spreads throughout history beyond 200BC where Egyptian surveys, used visual layouts to map towns, heaven and earth (Friendly, 2006). Visualization of data via art forms became more popular and effective due to high availability of over loading data streams and easy domestic visualization tools (Viégas & Wattenberg, 2007). Data artists such as Aaron Koblin and his Amsterdam SMS, New York Talk Exchange and Flight Patterns, projects are the inspiration for my experiment.

 

In an intelligent data network, a typical point to point connection between a device and Internet or another device consists of many number of sessions. Some of these sessions are permeant reliable and some are temporary sessions. Data we use every second in our life that transmits between devices and internet is called data packets and a connection transmit and receive millions of data packets at any given time. These data packets and their attributes are the key ingredients of my project and the once that create visualization effects.  

 

We live in an age where connectivity is the kay and big data is playing a major role in every industry reaching up to 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day (Walker, 2015). A basic AI self-driving car for an example is using around 4,000 GB of data (Nelson, 2016) for a day to complete the relevant tasks. Everything we do is hidden inside big data but we need a way to breakdown the complex sequences.

 

To understand Big Data, first we need to cognise patterns and trends embedded inside. This is where visualisation comes in to place to convert massive amounts of raw data converted to understandable patterns using graphical and analytical tools. This project aims to fabricate a glimpse of real time data visualisation from a live smartphone data stream.  

                     

 

References:

 

Friendly, M. (2006). A brief history of data visualization. Canada: Psychology Department and Statistical Consulting Service York University.

 

Nelson, P. (2016). Just one autonomous car will use 4,000 GB of data/day. Retrieved 18 May, 2017, from http://www.networkworld.com/article/3147892/internet/one-autonomous-car-will-use-4000-gb-of-dataday.html

 

Shanahan, M. (2015). The Technological Singularity. Retrieved 18 May, 2017, from https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/technological-singularity

 

Viégas F.B., Wattenberg M. (2007) Artistic Data Visualization: Beyond Visual Analytics. In: Schuler D. (eds) Online Communities and Social Computing. OCSC 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4564. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

 

Walker, B. (2015). EVERY DAY BIG DATA STATISTICS – 25 QUINTILLION BYTES OF DATA CREATED DAILY. Retrieved 11 April, 2017, from http://www.vcloudnews.com/every-day-big-data-statistics-2-5-quintillion-bytes-of-data-created-daily/