Toluu

Complexity and Social Networks Blog

Social Media vs. Knowledge ManagementNovember 24

Just a short post. Stumbled on an interesting article in Social Computing mag.

Pentland on Honest Signals on November 24November 17

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 a 20% discount to readers of this blog, through the end of this year. Just go the MIT Press site, and provide the discount code: PENTLAZER.

Honest Signals

November 24

Taubman-275 (Room subject to change)

12-1:30pm

Prof. Alex (Sandy) Pentland
Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences
Co-Director, Digital Life Consortium
Faculty Sponsor, Next Billion Network and EPROM in Africa
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

How can you know when someone is bluffing? Paying attention? Genuinely interested? The answer is that subtle patterns in how we interact with other people reveal our attitudes toward them. These predictive patterns seem to be biologically based "honest signals," evolved from ancient primate signaling mechanisms, and we find that they are major factors in human decision making in situations ranging from job interviews to first dates.

By analyzing these signals using data from electronic ID badges and specially-programmed smart phones, we can create a "gods eye" view of how the people in organizations interact, and even `see' the rhythms of interaction for everyone in a city.

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311: The Next Wave" - Harvard online event 11/13/08November 6

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 "next wave of 311," generated by 25 government leaders and technology and service providers convened at Harvard.

The forum will be moderated by former Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, who is the Dan Paul Professor of Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. The panel includes:

* Michael A. Sarasti, Manager, Strategic Customer Research & Development, Government Information Center, Miami-Dade County
* Neil Evans, 311 Project Director, City of Toronto, Ontario
* Joe Morrisroe, Deputy Commissioner & Executive Director: NYC 311 and NYC.gov
* Gerard Gallant - General Manager, Public Service/311, Motorola
* Zachary Tumin - Executive Director, HKS Leadership for a Networked World Program

For more information and to register for this event, please visit our event page at:

http://www.innovations.harvard.edu/spotlight.html?id=1561&preview=0

Also, when you register for the Government Innovators Network, we encourage you to sign up for our biweekly e-newsletter on emerging government innovations, Innovators Insights. Just be sure to check "yes" at the bottom of the registration page to subscribe to the newsletter. If you've

How Obama won: Conversion or mobilization?November 5

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 in 2004. Groups that increased their share of the electoral pie by more than 10% are represented by a larger dot. The question: did Obama's victory come from supportive groups (African Americans, young voters) turning out in greater numbers, or from moving all groups to greater support of him, as compared to Kerry?

The plot suggests that while the answer is some of both, Obama's victory may be more about conversion than mobilization. In particular, note that all groups plotted increased their support of Obama (if you have suggestions of other ways of slicing the data, please suggest and I will try to update the plot). While there was an impressive mobilization of African American voters (who have a strong tendency to vote Democratic), there were also other groups less supportive of Democrats who made up a larger fraction of the electorate in 2008 than in 2004-- most notably, evangelical voters. However, interestingly, even evangelicals were more likely to support Obama than Kerry.

Other interesting nuggets:

Young voters did n

Fun with numbers: did Obama redraw the political map?November 5

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 are not interested.

In any case, one interesting question is how much the map shifted from 04 to 08. That is, did we see Obama do a few points better than Kerry in all states, or did he improve more in some places than others? Below is a plot of Obama's vote share against Kerry's (where states that had significant increases in turnout are enlarged points).

As a point of comparison, see a plot of Obama's vote share against Carter's (where Carter had just a slightly lower share of the popular vote overall):

How did the map change from 2004 to 2008? There are a handful of states where Obama did not do better: West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Tennessee. And there are a few states that stand out a bit in terms of larger jumps: Hawaii is a big outlier, but also Montana, Utah, Nebraska, Idaho, Indiana, Nevada, New Mexico, and Vermont. In short, he did worse in some of the border states, and better in