I'm going to point here to another example of information visualisation elucidating an otherwise fairly abstract idea: the current recession in America.
It is clearly a public good to allow these visualisations to be made. In order for that to happen stakeholders in any given dataset should be granted access to this data. Amazingly, given its recent form on copyright infringement proposals, the British government is planning to do just that with the public release of 2000 data sets, including, brilliantly, the Ordnance Survey map data. Democracy in action, and something that should have happened a long time ago considering this data has been collected using public funds. We can expect to see a lot of interesting use being made with this data, with a very definite net gain for the citizens of Britain.
2 comments:
Great visualisation thingy. It's interesting that the midwest is so recession-proof. I guess the jobs there are more like hardy perenniels: essential baseline services rather than luxury/innovative professions that aren't strictly required...
Did you know my mum has worked with OS one way or another, throughout her life? I'll ask her about this...
I have no back up data for this, but I had assumed the midwest being recession-proof was due to unemployed people moving out and looking for jobs on the coasts (a kind of Dick Whittington effect).
I'd love to see what your mum thinks about this stuff.
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