"ABOUT MMM
"Micro Meta Mega is a research project sponsored by the graduate Media Design Program at Art Center College of Design. It is a design-driven inquiry into the future of humanities research and scholarly production. Through the creation of speculative environments and interfaces, the project aims to provide an alternative to the information environments envisioned through popular media and corporate promotions that tend to emphasize military, scientific, and business applications.
"When the micro and the meta meet the mega
"A recent study estimates that the amount of data generated in 2007 alone would cover the entire area of China in 13 layers of books. Google Books has digitized more than 12 million books and gathered and analyzed 3.27 billion records. Processing speed and memory capacity continue to increase dramatically. Clearly information production can now be described in terms of “mega.”
"Historically, the Humanities has been responsible for the maintenance and interpretation of the cultural record‚ a record that now grows exponentially. Much of the work of the Humanities could be described as micro—close reading and deep interpretation of individual artifacts and small collections. The Humanities has also been home to the meta—philosophical inquiry, critical theory, comparative analysis, and history.
"What happens to the micro and the meta in the world of the mega? Does quantity, power, and scale consume inquiry, deep attention, and ambiguity?
"When we think about complex information, our imaginations are clogged with an array of sci-fi interfaces—scientists manipulating 3-D holographic data, crime fighters looking for patterns in evidence, and so on…
"Not surprisingly, such visualizations tend to be dominated by military, scientific, and commercial interests and values. In an age of terrorism and corporate capitalism, this is where the money is and this is where the technological advancements are happening. But these real and imaginary information environments can be alien to the messy, associative, subjective, poetic, philosophical, and theoretical concerns of the Humanities.
"How different would these look if Humanities values—critical thinking, subjective interpretation, situated knowing, and the value of ambiguity—were built into the technological infrastructure and information interfaces? Micro Meta Mega will use design to consider what the qualities and capacities of such information environments might be."
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