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Recent Articles

• Collective Flushing – a measure of nationalism

  March 11, 2010 in Uncategorized

  Benedict Anderson’s wonderful book on nationalism Imagined Communities introduced the idea of simultaneity. Print media, back in the day, especially in vernacular languages (i.e. not latin) enabled the reading of the same ideas in different places at the same time (i.e. the morning paper) for the first time. This, he stated, created unity [...]

• Ottawa Open Data & Open Government in the News

  March 2, 2010 in Access, Uncategorized, canada, government, interview

  The City of Ottawa is discussing Open Data. On March 1. 2010 a Report to City of Ottawa: Information Technology Sub-Committee / Sous-comité de la technologie de l’information was discussed between and among City staff & councilors and three members of the public.
  The discussion yielded quite a bit of press in all the Ottawa [...]

• Taking Stock of Tech: Reflections on Law, Technology and Society + Ruins and Zeroing In: Infrastructure Ruins and Datalands + City of Ottawa: Open Data +

  March 1, 2010 in Uncategorized

  This is a big week!
  Friday, March 5 all day, there is a fantastic conference at Ottawa University for the inauguration of the Centre for Law, Technology and Society: Taking Stock of Tech: Reflections on Law, Technology and Society. The conference Program is fantastic and includes some of the world’s foremost authorities on things law, [...]

• Tattoo database!

  February 18, 2010 in Art, datasets, government, infrastructure

  Yup! I am not sure I would want all the personal data in the dbase public, but the non private stuff, such as the images that do not identify the persons and the associated metadata describing the tattoos would be a really interesting research too for those doing body studies.
  The database is part of [...]

• The Economist on Open Data

  February 8, 2010 in Uncategorized

  Among America’s number-crunchers-in-chief, it is Mr Chopra whose office comes closest to the new culture of using data in a free, creative way. He thinks more government agencies should mimic the division of labour that now defines his own job at the top of the American administration: a CIO who guards stable information platforms and [...]