This is a collection of text which we've cut from articles, essays, and grant applications but would like to reuse or repurpose. It's always rough to cut good writing so let's recycle!

Op-ed by Shannon & Jeff

Jan/Feb 2011

In principle, we are focused on moving beyond the “leftover data” that many people are accustomed to receiving from big science, instead of challenging it and making it their own. That is, while we support transparency in government, we’re concerned that for many, open databases and API’s are the ultimate goal, and not simply one source of information. Considering that much municipal and environmental data is produced for compliance reasons, it is often sparse, or of low quality. There is much to be said for cultivating a culture of openness, and for instituting an overwhelming public expectation for transparency, but we hope to overturn the assumption that this represents the only source of information to better understand and affect public, corporate, and governmental processes.

In contrast to the typical model of harvesting data from communities, our approach at PLOTS is to commoditize the expertise, and the experts, rather than the public. Instead of a scientist culling data from a sea of participants, we hope to create tools and a platform that will allow independent groups to gather, interpret and discuss the results of their work based not only on the use of scientific data. We are also intent on building a community and a culture of critical inquiry, and to emphasize the intimate awareness of ones environment brought by local community inhabitants. The desire to bridge the divide between “the experts” and local communities is one that came to the forefront in the above example of the BP Oil Spill, by residents that sought (then and now) to conduct their own discussion of spill impacts.

By contrast, as the spill progressed, more and more Gulf Coast residents began to use social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and independent blog sites as platforms for discussing what impacts they and their communities were experiencing, and to provide a means of discussion with individuals across the globe who were interested in the unfolding crisis. Instead of utilizing a ready-made data collection platform provided by an NGO, a media outlet or an academic institution, residents were eager to take the control and meaning of the data they were collecting and processing into their own hands.