** Envisioning Information ** Many techniques about layering, visual hierarchy and colors laid out by Tufte are quite familiar to me as our common design principles. The chapter about narratives of space and time has offered many new insights for me. The rich variety of formats which people came up with visualizing space-time data is remarkable, each with its own creativity. The example of David Hellerstein’s “The Slow, Costly Death of Mrs. K_,”, though appears in the chapter of layering and separation, is certainly also a great narrative. Reading it is almost like reading a novel. Showing details that we don’t normally pay attention or have access to has an astounding effect. The power of data is revealing in this case.

** The Spatial Humanities ** The way David Bodenhamer envisions the future of humanities is definitely worth pursuing. But just like he said we still have long way to go in terms of perfecting the integration of multiple views in history and culture into our spatial data representation. GIS nowadays is probably still not good enough for fulfilling such vision. After all it’s just one tool. In fact, I’m not sure if it is the right effort to criticize such tool with obvious limitation. In some way it almost feels like accusing a pencil for not being able to produce colors. If there’s a problem that must be how we use it rather than what it is. What we should pay more attention to is what we’re representing. With all the limitations in mind, maybe one we’ll come up with the right tool for all the envisioned subtle representations.