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

A just released Pew report, Networked Families (by Tracy Kennedy, Aaron Smith, Amy Tracy Wells, and Barry Wellman), may be of interest to some readers of the blog. To quote from the abstract: The internet and cell phones have become... David Lazer

Please see the remaining schedule for Cambridge Colloquium on Complexity and Social Networks for the Fall, 2008. Please note that a light lunch will be served at events. If you would like to be added to the e-mail list for... David Lazer

Before there was "crowd sourcing" there was the "madness of crowds." The current economic crisis raises an interesting question: how does one "regulate away" the madness of crowds? While there was likely a degree of moral hazard in the behavior... David Lazer

This conference, in honor of the 10th anniversary of the Watts and Strogatz paper, might be of interest to some on this list: BCNetWORKSHOP 2008 Physics Department, University of Barcelona, Spain, from Wednesday 10 to Friday 12 December 2008. Important... David Lazer

In the last year motion sensors have been deployed at a leading academic research laboratory to study how people use space. This study has been using sensors similar to those developed by MERL, which detect when an object moves under a sensor, which are mounted to the ceiling. This does enable for limited tracking capabilities, although the sensors are placed only in "public" spaces in the lab. Naturally this is rich area for research and this study also provides a platform for studying privacy systems. Ben Waber http://www.media.mit.edu/~bwaber/

I have written before about the network-based foundation of Obama's campaign. Another piece of the network strategy has just emerged, in an e-mail that just went out on Obama's list regarding a new tool, called "Neighbor to Neighbor." See excerpt:... David Lazer