Infoporn

Sept. 29, 2010, 11:43 p.m.

Were you aware that WIRED Magazine runs a feature titled Infoporn?  I wasn’t until today. It’s a two-page spread of sexy, sexy graphs. The latest issue features the world’s oil consumption/production patterns, starting in 1960 and extrapolated into 2020. On either side are graphs of the same information broken down by content. The color scheme is red, black, grey, white, and bright yellow, with a black-and-white oil-drop-shaped globe as the central graphic.

A little frilly, a little cutesy, but WIRED’s making a big innovation here by coining the term. Why wasn’t this already a thing?!  Far too many times have I had to explain my enthusiasm over stacked-percentage graphs with an abashed,  “I like…data.”  But there are so many of us out there!  Dorothy Gambrell, of very small array, is my favorite.  Her data may not be Legitimate News, but its usually fascinating, and always very, very sexy.  Maps of America shaded by the number of IKEAs per person in each state.  Blue and yellow, of course.  A series of stacked percentage graph of the No. 1 songs in the past sixty years. (I really, really like stacked percentage graphs.)

Anyways.  Here is my contribution to the data in the world.  Almost 100% narcissism.  A stacked percentage graph of the religious affiliation of the 10 most-tagged people in all of my Facebook albums (~4 a year), organized over time.  The Buddhist is white.  “Hippies” are people I think believe in Prana as more than a metaphor.

Infoporn

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