New paper by Nick van Breda and Jan Spruijt: “This article reviews how co-creation is developing over the world and how different businesses are able to use co-creation. To give a clear sight of that, stories of companies, marketers and trend watchers will be used to tell about this phenomenon called crowdsourcing and co-creation. Marketers found a method to combine co-creation with the existing method of creating something new. Based on research we can now predict how co-creation will develop over the following years.
The evolution of co-creation is more exciting than we previously thought and we think that these results have to do with how the internet and social media have developed. A revolution is coming up and organizations will see an increase in turnover based on fast innovation and participation by the crowd.
We are living a world with a new dimension: a dimension where large organizations have no reason for existence when customers aren’t satisfied with their purchase, the organization’s service and most of all their feeling of participation. Consumers feel that they should have the power to change visions and missions of the old fashioned marketing way: the manipulative way to earn money. A dimension where 24/7 online is the key to succeed, fast responses to questions and remarks. In this time if continuous changes, creativity is a must.”
Infoglut: How Too Much Information Is Changing the Way We Think and Know
New book by Mark Andrejevic: “Today, more mediated information is available to more people than at any other time in human history. New and revitalized sense-making strategies multiply in response to the challenges of “cutting through the clutter” of competing narratives and taming the avalanche of information. Data miners, “sentiment analysts,” and decision markets offer to help bodies of data “speak for themselves”—making sense of their own patterns so we don’t have to. Neuromarketers and body language experts promise to peer behind people’s words to see what their brains are really thinking and feeling. New forms of information processing promise to displace the need for expertise and even comprehension—at least for those with access to the data.
Infoglut explores the connections between these wide-ranging sense-making strategies for an era of information overload and “big data,” and the new forms of control they enable. Andrejevic critiques the popular embrace of deconstructive debunkery, calling into question the post-truth, post-narrative, and post-comprehension politics it underwrites, and tracing a way beyond them.”
Infoglut explores the connections between these wide-ranging sense-making strategies for an era of information overload and “big data,” and the new forms of control they enable. Andrejevic critiques the popular embrace of deconstructive debunkery, calling into question the post-truth, post-narrative, and post-comprehension politics it underwrites, and tracing a way beyond them.”
Infographics: Winds of change
Book Review in the Economist:
- Data Points: Visualisation That Means Something. By Nathan Yau. Wiley; 300 pages; $32 and £26.99.
- Facts are Sacred. By Simon Rogers. Faber and Faber; 311 pages; £20.
- The Infographic History of the World. By James Ball and Valentina D’Efilippo. Collins; 224 pages; £20.
“IN THE late 1700s William Playfair, a Scottish engineer, created the bar chart, pie chart and line graph. These amounted to visual breakthroughs, innovations that allowed people to see patterns in data that they would otherwise have missed if they just stared at long tables of numbers.
Big data, the idea that the world is replete with more information than ever, is now all the rage. And the search for fresh and enlightened ways to help people absorb it is causing a revolution. A new generation of statisticians and designers—often the same person—are working on computer technologies and visual techniques that will depict data at scales and in forms previously unimaginable. The simple line graph and pie chart are being supplemented by things like colourful, animated bubble charts, which can present more variables. Three-dimensional network diagrams show ratios and relationships that were impossible to depict before.
The 20 Basics of Open Government
Watching what is going on around the world in national, state, and local governments, we think opengov is maturing and that the time has come for a basics resource for newbies. Our goal was to include the full expanse of open government and show how it all ties together so that when you, the astute reader, meet up with one of the various opengov cliques that uses the terminology in a narrowly defined way, you can see how they fit into the bigger picture. You should also be able to determine how opengov can best be applied to benefit whatever you’re up to, while keeping in mind the need to provide both access for citizens to engage with government and access to information.
Have a read through it, and let us know what you think! When you find a typo – or something you disagree with – or something we missed, let us know that as well. The easiest way to do it is right there in the comments (we’re not afraid to be called out in public!), but we’re open to email and twitter as well. We’re looking forward to hearing what you think!.”
Governing Gets Social
Government Executive: “More than 4 million people joined together online in December 2011 to express outrage over the Stop Online Piracy Act, a bill Congress was considering that would have made content-sharing websties legally responsible for their users’ copyright violations, with punishments including prison time.
Experts called the campaign a victory for digital democracy: The people had spoken— the ones who don’t have lobbyists or make large campaign donations. And just as important, their representatives had listened.
There was a problem, though. Through social media, ordinary citizens told Congress and the president what they didn’t want. But the filmmakers, recording artists and others concerned about protecting intellectual property rights, many of whom supported SOPA, had a legitimate beef. And there was no good way to gauge what measures the public would support to address that.
A handful of staffers in the office of Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., thought they might have a solution. As the debate over SOPA rose to a boil, they launched the Madison Project, an online forum where users could comment on proposed legislation, suggest alternative text and vote those suggestions up or down. It was a cross between Microsoft Word’s track changes function and crowdsourced book reviews on Amazon.
Not all examples of this new breed of interactive social media happen at the macro level of legislation and presidential directives. Agencies across government have been turning to the platform IdeaScale, for instance, to gather feedback on more granular policy questions.
Once an agency poses a question on IdeaScale, anyone can offer a response or suggestion and other discussion participants can vote those suggestions up or down. That typically means the wisdom of the masses will drive the best ideas from the most qualified participants to the top of the queue without officials having to sift through every suggestion….
What many people see as the endgame for projects like Madison and Textizen is a vibrant civic culture in which people report potholes, sign petitions and even vote online or through mobile devices.
The Internet is great at gathering and processing information, but it’s not as good at verifying who that information is coming from, says Alan Shark, a Rutgers University professor and executive director of the Public Technology Institute, a nonprofit that focuses on technology issues affecting local governments.
“Star Trek is here,” Shark says. “We have these personal communicators, their use is continuing to grow dramatically and we’re going to have broader civic participation because of it. The missing piece is trusted identities.”
IRS database of nonprofits is filled with unredacted SSNs
Cory Doctorow in BoingBoing: “Remember when rogue archivist Carl Malamud asked the IRS for data on $1.5 trillion worth of data from nonprofit organizations? Well, it turns out that the IRS has totally failed to redact it properly, and left in the Social Security Numbers for thousands of people. So they’ve asked the IRS to take the database down and get it right. He explains:
Public.Resource.Org has issued a statement explaining why we asked the I.R.S. to temporarily take their political money database off the Internet and why they complied with our request. This database is a vital tool for researchers and we apologize to those of you that use this database on a daily basis.
This is only one of several exempt organization databases that the IRS has totally bungled. They’ve become addicted to bad Internet hygiene and it is time now for the Service to admit it needs help.
We deserve better for the public filings of exempt organizations, a category that makes up 10% of US wages and over $1.5 trillion in economic activity. Let’s hope the administration takes this seriously and sends in the A team.”
Why We Asked the I.R.S. to Temporarily Turn the Lights Off on Section 527 Data
Social: Why Our Brains are Wired to Connect
Book by Matthew D. Lieberman : “Why are we influenced by the behaviour of complete strangers? Why does the brain register similar pleasure when I perceive something as ‘fair’ or when I eat chocolate? Why can we be so profoundly hurt by bereavement? What are the evolutionary benefits of these traits? The young discipline of ‘social cognitive neuroscience’ has been exploring this fascinating interface between brain science and human behaviour since the late 1990s. Now one of its founding pioneers, Matthew D. Lieberman, presents the discoveries that he and fellow researchers have made. Using fMRI scanning and a range of other techniques, they have been able to see that the brain responds to social pain and pleasure the same way as physical pain and pleasure; and that unbeknown to ourselves, we are constantly ‘mindreading’ other people so that we can fit in with them. It is clear that our brains are designed to respond to and be influenced by others. For good evolutionary reasons, he argues, we are wired to be social. The implications are numerous and profound. Do we have to rethink what we understand by identity, and free will? How can managers improve the way their teams relate and perform? Could we organize large social institutions in ways that would work far better? And could there be whole new methods of education?”
Urban Observatory
Understanding Precedes Action: “Richard Saul Wurman, Radical Media, and Esri bring you the Urban Observatory—a live museum with a data pulse. You’ll have access to rich datasets for cities around the world that let you simultaneously view answers to the most important questions impacting today’s global cities—and you. Compare and contrast visualized information for a greater understanding of life in the 21st century.”
A Smarter, More Innovative Government for the American People
Steve VanRoekel and Todd Park at the White House Blog: “This morning, the President held a meeting with his Cabinet and senior officials to lay out his vision for building a better, smarter, faster government over the course of his second term. During the meeting, the President directed Cabinet members and key officials in his Administration to build on the progress made over the first term, and he challenged us to improve government even further….
This morning, the President stated, “We need the brightest minds to help solve our biggest challenges. In this democracy, we, the people, realize this government is ours. It’s up to each and every one of us to make it work better. And we all have a stake in our success.” Read the President’s full remarks here, and see all the graphics from his speech below.”
Beyond Code in the Tomorrow City
Article in the Next City: “Since 2009, the San Francisco-based non-profit Code for America has embedded its budding techies in one-year fellowships with city halls around the country. The goal: To build apps that make city governments run more effectively and bolster engagement between citizens and civil servants. But even Code founder Jennifer Pahlka — who hatched the idea for her organization over beers in Flagstaff, Ariz. and will soon take a year off herself to serve as a White House chief technology officer — admits that apps alone can’t solve the world’s problems. That might explain why the group’s mission is in flux, with hard questions and new projects pushing the increasingly high-profile group into its own 2.0 moment. Journalist Nancy Scola goes inside the Code for America universe, talking to believers and skeptics alike to find out how the organization is evolving and what that means for the future of the civic tech movement and cities at large.