"If insight
is the illumination achieved by penetrating inner depths, topsight
comes from a far-overhead vantage point, a bird's eye view that reveals
the whole -- the big picture; how the parts fit together. Overview
comes fairly close...But an overview is something you either have
or you don't. Topsight
is something that, like insight,
you pursue avidly and continuously, and achieve gradually. It is the
quality that distinguishes genius in any field. It is also the most
precious intellectual commodity known to man."
David Gerlernter, Mirror Worlds
The
solution to most problems comes from broadening one's perspective
and reframing it in new ways, to take advantage of the mind's untiring
efforts at connecting apparently unrelated knowledge, experience and
feelings. Quite intuitively, the mind combines disparate information
into new patterns.
A deluge of information
threatens to overwhelm decision makers and obscure the vantage point
that topsight requires. This is particularly true where data is collected
in massive amounts or is arriving too fast for the brain to absorb
unassisted.
In the same way
computer engineers are driven to devise techniques to increase the
bandwidth of bytes flowing through network pipes, interface designers
must employ techniques to increase the bandwidth of knowledge flowing
through to end-users.
According to Marshall McLuhan, the root of meaning
lies in the medium of our sensory apparatus: the physiology of sensing
the world, and the neurological process of attending to and organizing
those senses. In terms of interface design, it is not the receipt
of the message through the computer screen, but rather the recovery
of the message from that medium which counts. The most effective forms
of communication occur through a medium which can be "subtracted
out", leaving the message behind. Just as text-based interfaces
have given way to windows-based ones, the windows interface will give
way to interfaces that are experiential and three-dimensional.
Human vision is
still the most powerful means of sifting out irrelevant information
and detecting significant patterns. METAPHOR MIXER
excels at visualizing large, multivariate datasets -- allowing users
to configure real time information from many sources and create displays
that are information rich and understandable. Its intuitive, shared
visual grammar distributes topsight across increasingly decentralized
information environments and provides the necessary vantage point
for decision makers to succeed.
