The Center for Graphic Facilitation

Graphic Guru: Edward Tufte

Whenever I spot one of Tufte's elegant publications on someone's shelf, I exclaim: "Hey! You know Tufte!?"

This usually serves as the springboard for a conversation about truth, beauty and the evils of PowerPoint.

Edward Tufte is the closest thing that the charts-n-graphs crowd has to a rock star. And, just as Irish rocker Bono has raised public awareness for the desperate need to relieve Third World debt, Tufte has elevated public appreciation for the desperate need to save us from bad graphics.

Importance of Scenarios

In this month's edition of Atlantic Monthly, there are some glimpses at possible futures for the US War on Terror that will curl your toes and straighten your hair.

Richard Clarke, the former White House expert on terrorism, crafts a bleak, but credible scenario titled Ten Years Later; it is written as an imagined transcript of the "Tenth Anniversary 9/11 Lecture" delivered by a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.

As in-house counterterrorism expert with an 11-year term serving Clinton and both Bush administrations, Richard Clarke's Atlantic scenario is designed to make us think about the unintended consequneces of policy decisions since 9/11.

The piece weaves together a history of renewed attacks on US shopping malls, rail infrastructure, public transportation and even Las Vegas casinos and "Mouseworld".

Why would anyone do this? Why put such a terrifying scenario out there?

Because scenarios are tools for thinking through possible futures.

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Diagram: Things that are Bad

by Dick Costolo, Burning Door

(Forwarded by Kevin Kelly who describes this Venn Diagram as "almost Ed Tuftian in elegance.")

Click for enlargement