Power and Influence and Authority
Here is an interesting series of interrelated posts in which there is a discussion a proposal that twitter should allow search filtering. Whether you twitter or not, whether this was a good idea or not, the ideas are interesting and pertain to government information as well. Here we find reference to 3 kinds of power: 1. the ability to force you to do what you don’t want to do; 2. the ability to stop you doing something that you want to do; and 3. the ability to shape the way you think. Number 2 has an obvious analogy to the no-distribution FDLP because without distribution of the raw information it is difficult for libraries -- or anyone else -- to do interesting things like build full text indexes and specialized collections that combine government and non-government information or build mash-ups. But Number 3 is just as suggestive, because the interfaces that GPO and other government agencies provide give them the power to shape what questions we can ask and what answers we get. I'm not proposing a conspiracy of thought control, I am just saying that no one agency can provide all the possible views and interfaces and functionality that the richness of government information deserves. GPO continues to insist that making information "publicly accessible [at an] Internet site" (SUPERINTENDENT OF DOCUMENTS POLICY STATEMENT 301) is adequate in the digital age. Distributing the raw data would do so much more and allow so much more extensive and better use of the data. Why not allow that? Is it about "power"...?
- Bloggers Lose The Plot Over Twitter Search, by Michael Arrington, December 27, 2008
- Concepts of ‘authority’ in a networked world, by John Naughton, December 28th, 2008.
- The future that won’t be distributed, by Doc Searls, Dec. 30, 2008
Happy New Year!
Happy new year to all of you. Whether you are on vacation and peeking at the news, or reading this as you just get back to work, here is something interesting and fun to see: Martin Wattenberg. Data visualization. Media art. Collective intelligence. Wattenberg is a computer scientist and new media artist. He is the founding manager of IBM’s Visual Communication Lab, which researches new forms of visualization and how they can enable better collaboration. Check out his many projects (e.g., Name Voyager, the Baby Name Wizard with data from the Social Security Administration, or history flow, visualizing the editing history of Wikipedia pages, or Many-Eyes, an experiment in open, public data visualization and analysis). This is another good example of what interesting things can be done when we have complete access to information. When the raw data are free, we can do so much more than the single views of data provided by government agencies. Read more about Wattenberg here: He creates ways of seeing information, by Billy Baker, Boston Globe, December 29, 2008. Continue reading
Have a Transparency Question for Obama? Act Now!
If you have a question for President-Elect Obama on the subjects of transparency or government information, the next few days are your chance to ask him directly. Or support your favorite open-government organization. Change.gov has opened Round Two of Open for Questions where registered users get to ask questions and/or rate the questions of others. The first round only lasted a few days and so might this round. So get moving! And if you see good questions or ask some of your own on government information policy, please leave a comment so like-minded people can follow you. Continue reading
Forecast of Worldwide Information Growth
The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe: An Updated Forecast of Worldwide Information Growth Through 2011, An IDC White Paper - sponsored by EMC, John F. Gantz, Project Director, March 2008. This report estimates the dimensions of the digital information explosion. With figures like 281 billion gigabytes (the size of the "digital universe" in 2007, which is a million times the amount of digital data hosted by the Library of Congress in 2008 -- see Berman, Francine. Got data?: a guide to data preservation in the information age. Commun. ACM 51, no. 12 (2008): 50-56) and estimates like "By 2011, the digital universe will be 10 times the size it was in 2006" the report has sobering implications for digital preservation. In fact, it notes that:
As forecast, the amount of information created, captured, or replicated exceeded available storage for the first time in 2007. Not all information created and transmitted gets stored, but by 2011, almost half of the digital universe will not have a permanent home.Continue reading
Comparison of Legislative Resources on GPO Access and Selected Government and Non-Government Web Sites
GPO has a new version of its Comparison of Legislative Resources on GPO Access and Selected Government and Non-Government Web Sites (October 2008). It has separate files with tables showing the 34 GPO Access legislative resources studied and the scope of each of eight Web sites examined. (Scope of GPO Access and Government Web Sites and Scope of GPO Access and Non-Government Web Sites. The study compares legislative information available on GPO Access to House.gov, Senate.gov, THOMAS, Lexis-Nexis Congressional, Westlaw, CQ.com, and HeinOnline. The study finds that GPO Access contains a unique mix of online legislative resources not duplicated in total at other sites. ("No Government or Non- Government Web site, other than GPO Access, contains Economic Indicators, Independent Counsel Investigations, State of the Union, United States Government Policy and Supporting Positions (Plum Book), and the United States Government Printing Office Style Manual.") But, "In terms of scope of the legislative resources it provides, GPO Access is behind the other Web sites evaluated. Many of the other sites either contain historical content on their service or link to external sites with historical information, whereas GPO Access possesses current information that generally begins in the mid-1990s." The last study (2003) and previous studies are still available at http://fedbbs.access.gpo.gov/library/compare/. Continue reading