Turns out “Time Traveling: Interfaces for Geotemporal Visualization” doesn’t have anything to do with time travel. Still though, very interesting.  Tools that handle time well do not do well with spatial context (space is an abstraction). And vise versa. How do you marry these two important elements — visualizing an object or event in it’s proper time and, at the same time, show it spatially? The panel argues that those tools haven’t been developed yet. I never thought about this but it’s true.

I like to think the purpose of improving geotemporal visuals is that doing so will make for a better world. By and large, most of us are visual creatures and this is our preferred way of learning. Improving visuals by capturing more of the data will give us appreciation and better understanding of our historical context.