I read an incredible book on data visualization recently. It was so good that I read it in one go, taking as many notes as I could along the way. It put into words so many hazy thoughts I've had about humanistic approaches to visualization for a long time. Beyond explaining key concepts in science and technology studies (STS) in a few paragraphs -- what a blessing this would have been during my qualifying exams! -- this book moved easily between human-computer interaction (HCI), STS, and historical analysis to reframe empiricist approaches to data visualization. There's a lot of research that talks about how we should be more critical when it comes to visualization -- this book actually does it. Beyond its theoretical and practical strengths, the book itself is also beautiful: it's filled with gorgeous visualizations, and the interludes between chapters present deep(er) dives into specific projects with designer commentary. It is an absolute joy to read.
This book is aptly named Critical Visualization: Rethinking the Representation of Data, and it really is one of the best things I've read in a long time. It's hard not to be jealous of authors Peter Hall and Patricio Dávila: the conceptual analysis is smooth and the prose wonderful. Its great, concise title does exactly what it says on the tin. When I was interviewing for graduate school, the great David Kaiser once asked me if there was a book I wish I'd written. I wish I could travel through time to say Critical Visualizations. Vis researchers everywhere: READ THIS. Cite it! Assign it! Shout about it from the rooftops!
You say you want critical visualization work -- this is what you've been looking for!! (If you want more vis-specific research-y reflections, I'll write a separate post -- this one is already getting pretty lengthy, so if you want to skip the squishy emotional stuff, here's the time for you to click away.)
When I finished the book, I felt a huge wave of mixed emotions. On the one hand, I was exhilarated, intoxicated by sheer intellectual euphoria. This is what I'd been looking for all along. They solved problems that I had run into with creative solutions I would have never considered. They easily explained concepts I would have just thrown around for undergrads. It was good research and it had completed the golden task of being both rigorous and interesting for academics and accessible for their students.
But that was also the problem: it was what I'd been looking for all along. The ideas I had -- even if I had come up with them independently -- had already been written up. A lot of the examples were identical. Even the table of contents was organized in ways that I would have done myself. In fact, I could match specific chapter outlines I had written to specific chapters in the table of contents, and the headings reflected similar ideas, concepts, and case studies that I was thinking about too. Problem was, they had already done it better -- and sooner.
As it turns out, my thoughts -- which I already thought were meh to begin with -- were neither original nor good. It's done. There. Time to pack it in. What more is there to say?
I became a little despondent. The outlines and drafts, once buoyant, were now just saggy balloons found behind the couch a week after the party. I couldn't help but feel frustrated when I looked at the book: it was a great piece of scholarship and it had done what I had wanted to do, and better. The book became a concrete manifestation of something I feel all the time in academia: that other people were doing more, better, and faster. It was a beautifully written and printed piece of evidence that I had, yet again, failed. Even if the book wasn't very good, the fact that the physical thing existed at all was enough: it was a book. I don't even have a full draft on my computer! Outline words are not actual book words!
I know this is incredibly dramatic, and the fact that the book stirs up this much emotional turmoil is further evidence that, despite my insistence to the contrary, I do in fact conflate my personal sense of identity with my work. Even if everything I thought about being "scooped" was true, I always knew that there were people out there who could do everything I did but better. My mom had always told me: 人外有人，天外有天 -- "there are always people beyond this person, and skies beyond this sky." In other words, no matter how good you think you are, there's always someone better out there. We can't all be Eileen Gu -- free-skiing's most decorated athlete to date, Stanford student, haute couture model. That's easy to say. But in this tiny little pond, just trying to jump from one lily pad to another? My inability to write actual book words -- regardless of their quality -- felt like a personal failing. You can't run a marathon if you can't even take the first step.
I moaned about this to my writing coach (who I call my book doctor). I literally marked up a photocopy of the table of contents to see where my existing outlines and drafts were already covered. I moaned about this to my friends and family. Lacking another audience, I even moaned about it to my dog. My book doctor, Jais, listened as he usually does: patiently, carefully, and thoughtfully. I did my little ramble.
"You know it can't literally be the same, right?" he'd said. "Ideas begin anew because they're written by different people, with different perspectives, with different goals. Your work is new because you're writing it." Even if they had done it "better," it still means that what you were going to write was going to be something different. In his infinite wisdom, he asked me to think about being in dialogue with the book. If I were the discussant for a panel about this book, what would I highlight? What would I say if I even actually talked to the authors? Surely I'd say at least something that was not just their work verbatim!
There was a clear logical inconsistency: how could my writing be the same if the book was better? By what metric? For whom? With all the STS training I'd had to this point, how could I not remember that this kind of static categorization was fundamentally social and not absolute?
There were clear differences: in examples, in conceptual analysis, in writing flourishes. Even if it were the same, I could respond to those thoughts by expanding them to somewhere new: other historical contexts, other concepts in computer science and media studies. If the book was as generative as I believed it to be, then it should give me a boost. Good research is about expanding the conversation, not about flag planting a single idea. I had always told my students that there was no one authoritative source on anything, and that the exciting part of research and writing is about the dialogue and interaction between ideas. The great M.R. Sauter, forever the source of the best academic advice and comfort, reminded me: two books about the same thing is called a literature.
It's nice to be reminded of what really matters in all of this: it's not about getting there first, or even about gaining recognition for the work. Despite what it feels like, it was never about the awards or citations or "impact." As corny as it sounds, it was always about learning something new, writing it down, and talking to other people about it. Being a professor certainly brings a slew of benefits and drawbacks, and you do put up with all sorts of shit in academia. But at its best, this job lets you do and write and think about stuff that doesn't sell. It can be difficult to see that through the haze of tenure and all the ills that plague this profession. But as someone who has made peace with the fact that I will probably not get tenure (no publications since 2023!), seven years is still a pretty long artist's residency. My livelihood does not depend on someone buying something I've produced or having some foundation believe that my work will have social impact. A tenure-track assistant professor's salary, especially at a fancy university, is really a patronage à la Medici: they give me money for making creative stuff. Abysmal book and article sales do not affect whether or not I can pay my utilities this month. It mostly means that I can't do this anymore after 7 years, which is a totally respectable amount of time to have this kind of creative freedom. Honestly, having the same job forever actually sounds kind of boring.
All this to say: it's not about getting "scooped." Especially if you do not really care about tenure, it's not about being "better." It's about thinking deeply, taking a breath, and sharing knowledge. This is the one time in my life where my creative output can have 0 commercial value and it comes with the golden opportunity to vibe with some of the most intellectually interesting people on the planet. I'm getting paid to teach and write, but really I'm getting paid to learn all day with some bullshit in between. The price is having to write it up and share it with other people, which sounds like a pretty good bargain to me. I don't have to write a book; I get to. Even N.K. Jemisin couldn't quit her day job until her third Hugo Award!
I don't know anyone who goes into higher education for the money -- indeed, my advisor Graham Jones always told me that this was a vocation. However, I can pretty confidently say that everyone I know in academia likes to learn. (It's not the only place you can do that, to be sure, but it's a pretty good one if you can swing it.) Reading is learning. Writing is learning. Talking with other people is certainly learning. That's what it's all about -- not about getting there first, or even being the best at it.
There will always be the people who get on the podium after a marathon is over, but the real achievement is having run it in the first place.