There was an interesting article in today's New York Times on Google books. Google books is a massive effort to scan, essentially, all print media, going back centuries. (Also see effort by Open Content Alliance.) Partially putting aside the important... David Lazer

It has been a remarkable thing watching the effects of the financial crisis spread to every corner of the economy. Certainly, in my lifetime, there has not been anything quite so systemic. Internationally, we see Iceland, essentially, going bankrupt, and... David Lazer

You can now read the papers from ICIS 2008 online. The best paper I mentioned in my last post can be found here. Some of you might be interested in the paper Emmanuelle Vaast and I presented, entitled "Bringing Change... Maria Binz-Scharf

Greetings from the City of Lights - I am happy to report that our fellow blogger Ben Waber just received the Best Paper Award here at ICIS 2008 for the following paper, co-authored with Lynn Wu, Sinan Aral, Erik Brynjolfsson,... Maria Binz-Scharf

As I wrote about earlier, a fascinating question is what happens to the Obama network now that the campaign is past. The Obama campaign mobilized unprecedented amounts of money and numbers of people. The possibility: that politics in this country... David Lazer

Just a short post. Stumbled on an interesting article in Social Computing mag.... Alexander Schellong http://www.citizen-relationship-management.de

FYI, for those of you in Boston, you should note that Sandy Pentland will be talking about his provocative new book, Honest Signals: How They Shape our World, on November 24 (details below). Note, also, that MIT Press has offered... David Lazer

Nine Imperatives for Leadership of 311-Enabled Government November 13, 2008: 2:30 - 4:30 pm (EST) ~Online event. Registration required, and free of charge.~ Join us for this free, interactive discussion outlining the findings and discoveries of a report about the... Alexander Schellong http://www.citizen-relationship-management.de

Did Obama win by mobilizing groups who have supported Democrats in the past, or converting new people to support him? Below is a plot of the support various demographic groups provided Obama in 2008 to the support they provided Kerry... David Lazer

This is, at best, tangentially related to the mission of this blog. The thing is that I am not only a political scientist but I am also a political junkie. And you can always just not read this if you... David Lazer

Interesting piece in CQ on the manipulation of intrade. Two excerpts: An internal investigation by the popular online market Intrade has revealed that an investor's purchases prompted "unusual" price swings that boosted the prediction that Sen. John McCain will become... David Lazer

I previously blogged about how environmental sensors could transform how we think about architecture and how this data could be combined with wearable sensors. At the Media Lab's Awareness event, held last Thursday, myself and other Media Lab researchers explored this in more detail. At this event, over 150 sponsors, students, and faculty wore Sociometric Badges for the entire day so that we could show how interactions and behavior varied across different areas of the lab during different parts of the day, as well as give people insights into how different companies behaved. Ben Waber http://www.media.mit.edu/~bwaber/

Interesting piece on fivethirtyeight comparing polls that included cell phones and those that did not. The takeaway: "Obama leads by an average of 10.0 points in the cellphone polls, versus 5.1 in the landline-only's." For a more thorough look, go... David Lazer

Democracy takes place at the doorway. The doorways of our homes represents the literal and metaphorical threshold between our private lives and society. From the perspective of our democracy, the doorway is the place where our private interests and perspectives... David Lazer

Are you in favour of more efficient and effective government? Of course you are. If one counted the reasons given most often for any type of government reform, these two would score the highest marks. It is widely recognised that... Alexander Schellong http://www.citizen-relationship-management.de

My colleague, Archon Fung, in conjunction with ABC news, has launched a "crowd sourcing" initiative to identify problems at polling places, called MyFairElection. A full description is below. Please do forward on this information, and contribute information to the project.... David Lazer

If you are looking for a colorful example of "social capital" check out ">article in sports section of today's New York Times, examining the flow of "intelligence" among NFL teams. It is an interesting study in the ethics of sharing... David Lazer

The following event PNG is sponsoring might be of interest to readers of this blog: Marc Smith--Online tutorial for Excel .NetMap October 27, 2008: 12-2 pm (EDT) ~Online event. Registration required, and free of charge.~ Note that there is a... David Lazer

Interesting blog posting from techPresident comparing Obama's "Neighbor to Neighbor" tool to McCain's "Voter to Voter". Some key observations: If you do a Google search for the words Obama and "neighbor to neighbor," Google returns 479,000 hits. A search for... David Lazer

What happens to the Obama "network" after the election? It's an intriguing question. The capacity that has been built to mobilize people's time and money greatly exceeds that of the parties. Think about it: Obama's campaign has mobilized on the... David Lazer