Neo Mohsenvand thinks part of the key to understanding big data might be making better use of the human mind, and not relying as much on algorithms. Mohsenvand, a research assistant at MIT Media Lab, is building a machine that he has branded the “DataVRse”: a physical space where people can strap on a VR headset and use their human senses to explore it and find patterns.
“What we are doing is basically we are synthesizing new environments which are basically data-driven,” he says. “You step in a room while wearing your virtual reality goggles, and you’re in a new environment that is constructed from the data. You get to develop some sort of gut feeling for what is normal in that environment.”
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As the researchers build the new system, they’re beginning with a focus on data about food, for several reasons, both abstract and practical. The food chain is a fundamental organizing principle of the world. Food helps us defeat entropy. Food is likely part of what led human ancestors to learn to collaborate; cooking food made us human. Food data—from chemical composition to consumption patterns—is highly complex, making it ripe for analysis.
On a practical level, studying food is a way to understand, for example, how people make decisions. “Every time I want to eat, I have to make decisions which are basically an immersive physicalization of data,” he says. “We are hoping to find very interesting patterns about the dynamics of society, the dynamics of economy.”
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Source: Fastcoexist