At PBS IdeaLab: "Sourcemap Makes Data Visualizations Transparent"
Andrew conducts the communications efforts for the MIT Comparative Media Studies program (websites, press relations, and project and event publicity), including those of the Center for Civic Media and the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab. A native of Washington, D.C., he holds a B.A. in communication from Wake Forest University and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Emerson College. His marketing and P.R. skills were honed first at Houghton Mifflin and later at Tufts University. He was also the long-time fiction editor for Identity Theory.
At PBS IdeaLab: "Sourcemap Makes Data Visualizations Transparent"
The latest C4FCM post from the Idea Lab blog:
While pitched as a way to create and visualize "open supply chains," Sourcemap's real virtue is that the data itself is fully sourced. Like the links at the bottom of a Wikipedia article and the accompanying edit history, you know exactly who added the data and where that data came from. You can take that data and make counter-visualizations if you feel the data isn't correctly represented. Sourcemap's very structure acknowledges that visualization is an editorial process and gives others a chance to work with the original data. For example, here's an example of a Sourcemap for an Ikea bed:
Read the rest at PBS MediaShift Idea Lab: "Sourcemap Makes Data Visualizations Transparent"
Comments
Sourcemap is going to revolutionize the way we work in terms of transparency of information and open supply changes. Your thoughts on the idea behind the sourcemap are completely accurate. This is a basic and a fundamental right of everyone, the right to access of information. On the given link Sourcemap clearly gives you an open supply chain module with links for an Ikea product.
Similarly you can create your own Sourcemaps. What is interesting to explore is that data visualization by itself is very interesting but the process of how it is collected, arranged and more importantly validated has not yet been established. Your point on the entire background of collating the process is quite rightly the biggest challenge in establishing the applications usefulness and popularity.
Therefore even though Sourcemap’s revolution is noble it is the process which needs not only refining but complete transparency in the process execution part. Your acknowledgment that data visualization can lead to extraordinary things but it is the collection and processing of data from the start to end point which needs a clear and open forum for analysis. Imagine the possibilities, you can trace money laundering operations and bank transactions. There is a hue opportunity in this revolutionary application and we are all hoping Sourcemaps is able to give its customers the trust and security not just tools to toggle a map.