Security, Privacy, Information and Surveillance Discussion by Prof William Webster, Prof Charles Raab and Dr Andrew Neil

We live in a surveillance age where digital technology has become ingrained in almost every part of our lives, and the personal data is collected, pooled and examined by various commercial and political agencies. With such developments we are yet to find our feet with how information should be regulated and in what ways it should flow from one system to another. Privacy seems to be traded off with security in many dichotomous statements made around who gets to do what, but are these helpful or correct ways of perceiving the issues at stake ? Read more…

Graphic Information Design: Information Design

Information design is the practice of preparing information so people can use it with efficiency and effectiveness. Information design is a part of graphic design. The term has come to be used specifically for the graphic design of displaying information effectively, rather than just aesthetically. The term ‘information design’ emerged as a multidisciplinary area of study in the 1970s. Document design is another summative description of the field. Information design involving creating structure for sets of information in specialized fields. Read more…

Graphic Information Design: Print History

The British Library holds a copy of the Buddhist text known commonly as the Diamond Sutra (a more accurate translation of the Sanskrit title might be, the Vajra Cutter Sutra). It is a short Mahayana sutra of the Perfection of Wisdom (prajna-paramita) genre, which teaches the practice of the avoidance of abiding in extremes of mental attachment. A copy found among the Dunhuang manuscripts in the early 20th century, is, in the words of the British Library “the earliest complete survival of a dated printed book.” Read more…

Graphic Information Design: Introduction

This is a rudimentary introduction to the field of graphic information design, which when well done can communicate complex knowledge clearly from one person to others. Georgias was the second most noted of the ancient Greek teachers known as the Sophists. In Gorgias’ formulation of knowledge, there is a gap between objects and the mind, and another gap between the mind’s knowledge and the language which would express it. Read more…

Where Information Goes In And Nothing Comes Out

Over the last five years I have been making a study of what is needed to create a community education project or network. The Ragged University project is about promoting and propagating all communities rather than building a monolith; this is another part of it as a multi-valued project which is interested and inspired by people sharing their knowledge in social spaces. A ‘recipe book’ is being created to distill helpful information and insights for all people out their who want to run their own ‘Ragged-University-type-project’. Read more…