It’s not very pretty because while bill writers have been posting the PDFs, PDFs don’t make it easy to make comparisons. The bill writers are composing the bills in XML, and if they made those available we the public would have an easier time. Maybe we wouldn’t complain to our reps so much either because we could actually understand what is going on better!

The history of representative democracy and government is waiting to be similarly told; here’s a broad collection of data indexed on a world map, representing data sets about freedom and government (by Zachary Johnson). When these visualizations are easier to create, and free to those with an Internet connection, our collective ability to visualize societal trends and expressive freedom should continue to develop. What role will this play in shaping the continuing development of industrialized countries? Will a digital view of what we’re up to lead to better policy?

This stuff is really compelling, and will just become more pervasive and easier to use as data processing becomes better standardized (and therefore easier to repurpose) and as political parties, legislatures, and businesses see that it is in their interest to engage in the collaboration necessary to achieve broad standards adoption and development.

(again, from info aesthetics.)

(this video is really amazing. follow the above link.)

Data visualizations’ effects reach well beyond the aesthetically creative, as this post observes:

Transparent recycling bins in Shibuya station.

The extent that transparency of what is disposed changes consumption habits. to what extent is a consumer less likely to buy products with a social stigma such as a pornographic magazine or more virtuous products when the act of consumption and disposal is transparent?

It seems that encouraging public awareness has an effect on incentive structures, even outside the public sector, even with respect to garbage bag design.

A more clearly compelling example of public information presented graphically would be Sunlight Labs’ earmark visualization project, which demonstrates spending allocation priorities much more effectively than text. Simple data sets have greater public appeal when presented visually.

Digital analysis can also lead to new types of connections and data sets, built on newer tools that have a semantic component, utilizing languages like RDF, natural language processing, or other complex analysis methods, like topic maps.

Some robust news collection tools that are developing semantic components include textmap.com, featuring ambitiously detailed relationship processing (click around there–very interesting stuff), or daylife.com, with a pleasing interface to semantically sorted news items.

Even with a more limited semantic component, however, the broader adoption web 2.0 style data presentation will ensure that basic political information is better diffused throughout society. For a pertinent example, see this Utah blogger who has taken OpenCongress.org’s tools, combined them in widgetbox, and used them to create a “blidget” (portmanteau of blog and widget) featuring their representatives’ latest votes. Very cool.

We made an entry a week or so ago for Gmail’s promotional video contest, featuring us throwing around an enlargement of the Gmail sign. Using Google’s intuitively designed tools, I drew up a basic map of where most of the video took place. Click on the blue pins in the map to see the video and details.

Make sure to watch the bloopers video, which was pretty hilariously edited by Nisha.

View Larger Map

For more details on how to create your own map, see the Gmail blog here.

Combine this sort of data with fixmystreet (a mysociety.org project) or another similar application with an element of active civic participation, and you can start to visualize how the internet will continue to transform the way we interact with our environment–in increasingly relevant and localized ways.

For more background, see this OReilly radar post.

Update: Also see the Washington Post’s mapping crime page, which is doing a similarly great job, available here.