I’ve been playing the some data driven visualization tools, Delicious replacements, and Dan Gillmor’s new downloadable book this week.
- Centuries of Books at a Glance: This week’s announcement of Google Books Ngram Viewer and the associated New York Times story: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/17/books/17words.html.
I have been playing with things like searching for the word “technology” and comparing it to the history noted in Kevin Kelly’s What Technology Wants book, where he notes how recent technology is as a social phrase. Intriguing!
- Who’s in School: I spent some time tinkering with the selectable visualization tool on demographics of U.S. undergraduates from The Chronicle of Higher Education: http://chronicle.com/article/Who-Are-the-Undergraduates-/123916/. This reminds me of many aspects of U.S. education, including that most college students are white and in 2 year programs. I also was fascinated by the comments, which included how obvious some of this was to some people (and not others).