Sterne and Akiyama’s essay is filled with fascinating insights, but one line in particular stood out to me: “data are fluid and not necessarily tethered to any one sense.” This is a crucial idea as we often associate certain data with individual senses, versus understanding and utilizing the potential interactions between the senses in fully appreciating and comprehending data.

When you receive a text, you likely absorb the data and metadata about the message through a variety of senses. Tactile feedback through the phone’s vibration and auditory information from a notification beep communicate metadata that a message has come through. The content of the message itself is typically absorbed visually. Taste and smell are utilized very infrequently in textual data comprehension.

What if we could learn to absorb data through a variety of senses? Sonification is a great place to start as people are in general familiar and receptive towards auditory cues. Many forms of important data are already communicated via sound. A straightforward example is Geiger counters. The concept of a Geiger counter is simple—as levels of radiation increase, the rate of clicking increases. This communicates radiation data in an easily understandable way, that further has the benefit of not requiring apt attention to absorb. It would be fascinate to expand this idea for use cases other than alerts.