

Ethics, data and visualization - adw
http://blog.timetric.com/2010/08/08/ethics-data-and-visualization/

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barrkel
I don't think it's possible to put together a visualization - by its nature,
some kind of summation of the data - without putting a frame on it, i.e.
editorializing in some way. If you have some question, and you break it down
by age, or by sex, or by political affiliation, whichever you choose colours
the data's interpretation. Invariably you can't choose every possible
summation, and often when working with data about people you can't supply the
raw underlying data without compromising anonymity.

~~~
adw
(I wrote the original link, and I'm one of Timetric's founders.)

Absolutely.

So if you're building a service around this, like what Timetric, or ManyEyes,
or any of the other services which include social visualization; or you're
supplying data on an industrial scale, like we do, or Bloomberg does, or
SimpleGeo does...

...then we believe there's ethical responsibility to your users to let _them_
editorialize and not, whether by omission or by commission, force a viewpoint
upon them.

We need, as an industry, to talk about this stuff.

