[From ACM Tech News:
http://technews.acm.org/]
Data and Democracy: Building Tools for Citizen Engagement
CITRIS Newsletter (08/15/12) Gordy Slack
Developing tools to promote citizen engagement, specifically direct
participation by citizens in the political process, is the goal of
CITRIS' Data and Democracy Initiative (DDI). One of DDI's efforts is
the Rashomon Project, an open source media editing and compilation
program designed to integrate several distinct sources of narrative
into a single multilayered story, with a display screen showing
multiple panels that can play footage side by side to facilitate a
multi-perspective chronology of one event. DDI director Camille
Crittenden says Rashomon could be used to build footage taken at
political demonstrations into a synchronized, holistic presentation.
Measuring the personal financial effects of different political
scenarios is the purpose of the DDI-supported online Politify tool,
developed to address a perceived dearth of empiricism in the way U.S.
voters choose candidates. Politify's developers created software that
lets voters feed in their own incomes and other personal data, and
then crunches the numbers based on the candidate's platforms,
generating the personal cost to voters that each platform, if enacted,
would likely impose. "In the short term we want to support efforts to
narrow the gap between eligible, registered, and active voters,
especially among under-represented groups," Crittenden says.
http://citris-uc.org/news/2012/building_tools_citizen_engagementThe Big Apple's Big Data Advantage
Fortune (08/20/12) Anne VanderMey
Microsoft's new research lab in Manhattan will focus on big data
analysis, examining massive amounts of information created by the
world's digital users, says lab director Jennifer Chayes. She says the
facility will study how big data can help answer social science and
economic questions, and what it means for the interaction of the
social sciences with technology. One project involves studying how
people make bets, because if people place bets on certain things, they
are usually more invested in that thing, which can be a very effective
way of collecting data, Chayes notes. The lab also has researchers
that are building Vowpal Wabbit, a machine-learning platform that
provides a faster way to analyze huge data sets. Chayes says the lab
has strong relationships with all of the major universities in the
area, such as New York University, Columbia University, and Cornell
University. New York City has adopted the nickname "Silicon Alley,"
and it is becoming a focal point for data-intensive startups in Web
2.0 and beyond, Chayes notes. "When you look at the new companies out
there, so many of them are really data-driven businesses," she says.
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/08/20/the-big-apples-big-data-advantage/-Glen Newton
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