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This is old skool data mining.
In the UK, the Guardian Newspaper put 700,000 documents of MPs’ expenses online for review. Rather than employing text analysis software, the Guardian is relying on humans to read, decipher, and flag suspicious spending for further review. As of 5 am (MT) 80% of the documents were reviewed.
Nothing like the possibility of salacious or euphemistic mis-classification of dubious expenses to fire up the inquisitive nature of the common man.
I can’t help but wonder what this type of forensic illumination this may bring to the democratic process. How would MPs or members of Congress spend and behave if they knew the public might scrutinize line by line every reported expense? Would there be more accountability or would this lead to more creative methods by lobbying firms to buy influence?
Perhaps both.
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Mashable is reporting the sudden flatline of Twitter’s phenomenal growth.
Image from Mashable.com
Even though I use Twitter, I do so reluctantly. My life and thoughts are not, quite honestly, so exciting nor profound that I need to broadcast every action and thought to my followers. I find Twitter beneficial for following some thought leaders or a general monitoring of the Twitter stream for information.
This Harvard study reports on what I’ve suspected yet lacked the background data: 10% of Twitter users create the vast majority of the content. And when you look at the content created by these uber Tweeters, there is so much crap and self-aggrandizement, many followers drop off out of frustration. In essence, Twitter has become a communication/broadcast medium for a community of followers rather than a conversational medium.
Maybe I’m being too harsh. Part of Twitter’s huge growth may be attributed to a voyeuristic satisfaction of peering into a person’s daily activities via Tweets. Perhaps the majority of followers have realized that in the end, their own lives are more interesting than those they follow.
I was thinking this morning that I haven’t heard about anyone being “revolutionary” in a while as it relates to a leader of a movement. That applies to technology, biology, etc… It could be that I’ve been living under a rock (not likely, but I’ll accept that as a possible explanation) or that I don’t travel/read in the right circles.
We don’t hear about the monumental characters who are so persuasive in their words, so committed to their actions, by their presence and determination, they shake the foundation of society and redefine a new water line. I wonder, has the Internet made the need for one unifying voice obsolete?
In days of Jesus Christ, Oliver Cromwell, Tomas Jefferson, Bill Buckley, Emma Goldman (fill in the name of your favorite revolution here______________), persuasiveness was reflected not only upon what they wrote (or preached) but how they implemented their vision. In the modern era, say since 1997, the tools of vision communication have become pedestrian: available to many and therefore the message must be that much more compelling to rise above the noise. The vision and voice of the individual leader has largely been replaced by the revolutionary masses (or hordes, depending on your perspective).
Where have all the revolutionaries gone?
Has technology made them obsolete? Or has technology amplified yet distributed the common voices so that coalescence now occurs at an individual level?
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Ok, so I don’t get paid to write. But it takes two things I love doing:
1. writing
2. learning about web 2.0 companies, technology, and trends
and melds them together.
The power of the press!
(examiner.com is an online property owned by Walden Media)
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