The first chapter of the new book solved some of the questions that I have had for years. Like why some books would like to use highlighter and bold font to indicate the important parts of the book. Overall, the first chapter is clear and straightforward, unlike the chapters we read before, which was kind of abstruse for me. The author of the new books introduced how our brain reacts to colors and differentiation between words, which leads to the use of colors and font style in daily life, such as traffic lights etc.This kind of visual perception will form information in our mind, based on the personal experiences, people may have different interpretations toward the information they perceive. However, people do have a common sense about a certain color, for example, green means ok, red means danger or stop etc. When it comes to information design, a balance should be kept between different information, especially when expressing the relationship between them. There are many diagrams or forms to show the relationship, it doesn’t matter if it is hierarchy, or tree map, the position of information does not represent their physical position. In other words when people are doing the information design, the relationship between different information or data should be expressed clearly and not misleading to the reader.

The meaning of big data, as the literal meaning, is the data that is big in scale and size. Before I read big data, I didn’t have a clear view of how big data has been useful in our society. When I was reading big data, I was amazed by the power of big data, but also a concern came to my mind, that is, are there any privacy under big data? Obviously, some social media would like to gather as much information from users, such as viewing history, so the social media will base on your history to push ads or videos to users. Yes, indeed, it is convenient, however, it is also a poison. Social media will push the videos or contents that users like, doesn’t matter if it is right or wrong, as long as it is attractive and keeps the click through rate, some of social media might just make up some fake news to gain attention, especially if the social media is reputable. Therefore, people should pay attention to how big data is being used, otherwise, a panacea that could save many people from disease could also become a poison to people’s privacy.

Here is the video link of explanation of big data that i found quite understandable: