
How 3-D Printing Is Revolutionizing the Display of Big Data - ca98am79
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/531596/how-3-d-printing-is-revolutionizing-the-display-of-big-data/
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Wogef
I used to volunteer teaching English to Chinese kids from migrant families
(displaced within China). One of the ways I illustrated the value of English
was to print several objects of differing size. Those sizes each represented
the average salary of a given profession in China. Then I had a piece which
would nest on top of that object that showed the value of English- the
additional salary an English speaking Chinese professional in that field could
expect. The physical, tactile experience- objects of very different sizes with
variables they could manipulate with their hands really got the point across
in a way to those kids that graphs never did.

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chton
An interesting idea, but it may be short-lived. They're essentially using a 3D
printer as a poor man's 3D hologram system. Very nice application of the
technology, but once we commercialize actual holograms it'll be obsolete - in
much the same way slides were replaced with monitors.

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carb
I think it's more likely that AR or VR will be used for this purpose. It's
already pretty trivial because they've already created the 3D model
representing the data, all they have to do is throw it into a game engine.

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chton
AR and VR still aren't quite as convenient as a real 3D model you can walk
around and point at. The technology isn't there yet. But it's true, once it
reaches that point it might be used for this and would replace the 3D-printed
models even faster.

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ObviousScience
But AR and VR get you one more dimension (time) than a 3D model and are much,
much, MUCH easier to produce a large display from.

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placeybordeaux
I completely fail to see how big data comes into play at all. All they mention
is that the use geo tagged twitter that that is specific to MIT. I don't that
visualizing a well defined subset of data on a 3D space was really related to
the problems presented by 'big data'.

