Google Public Data

Great new access to data and mapping.
Leave it to Google:
"Data visualizations for a changing world: The Google Public Data Explorer makes large datasets easy to explore, visualize and communicate. As the charts and maps animate over time, the changes in the world become easier to understand. You don't have to be a data expert to navigate between different views, make your own comparisons, and share your findings."

City of Information

The City of Information

"Wikipedia may be the closest thing to a metropolis yet seen online."

taken from: Wikipedia - Exploring Fact City, by Noam Cohen for the NYTimes

"...Like a city, Wikipedia is greater than the sum of its parts; for example, the random encounters there are often more compelling than the articles themselves. The search for information resembles a walk through an overbuilt quarter of an ancient capital. You circle around topics on a path that appears to be shifting. Ultimately the journey ends and you are not sure how you got there..."

Virtual Deputies

Virtual Deputies is a new private/public program through the The Texas Border Sheriff's Coalition and BlueServo. In the past several months a network of surveillance cameras have been set up along the Texas/Mexico border. Now in the comfort of your own home, people can log in to the site and partake in the act of spotting illegal aliens with real surveillance video. Operating 24/7, the greater public can now survey and report directly to the Coalition any suspecious activies.

Groups can also form to turn the cameras on their own communities with the local Virtual Neighborhood Watches...

Tracing our Clicks

By monitoring what we google online, can we actually get a better sense of the what the general public are thinking, experiencing and doing?

Leave it to Google itself to find that out. Google Flu Trends for example, within this report taking data from the past four years to show that by identifying key search terms, Google Flu Trends can call a flu outbreak up to 10 days before the CDC an identify it.

From their site:

"Each week, millions of users around the world search for online health information. As you might expect, there are more flu-related searches during flu season, more allergy-related searches during allergy season, and more sunburn-related searches during the summer. You can explore all of these phenomena using Google Trends. But can search query trends provide an accurate, reliable model of real-world phenomena?"

..."real-world phenomena"...

How are our individual actions both virtually and physically understood within a collective?
What kind of "thinking" are we entering into a www database?
What kind of "thinking" could we begin entering into a www database to improve other social, cultural, economic functions?
What is a truly transparent city that can quantify satisfactions? dissatisfactions? qualifications?

image credit: google.org
additional article: new york times