Comparative indices are widely used in international development circles to benchmark and monitor public policy objectives. To date, however, no one has examined how an index of Access to Knowledge might be constructed. This article examines the methodological issues involved in such a project and provides a blueprint for the development of a robust and reliable A2K Index. For those new to the Access to Knowledge framework, this article also serves as a concrete and concise orientation to the ideological perspective rapidly reshaping the fields of international development, communications, technology, education, and intellectual property policy.

Downloadable here. Via Jurisdynamics.

Here is what I found.

Apparently, rashes are almost as popular as McCain in Austin, Texas. And Australians are much more concerned about rashes than McCain.

Now, please note that what I have done is really stupid. This graph shows nothing. It means nothing.

I wonder whether analyzing search term popularity means anything at all. After all, today Luther Campbell of 2 Live Crew got a bit bump in searches. Why? He got married. Yawn.

Apparently, lawyers are trying to introduce Google Trends data into trial evidence and political campaigns are trying to analyze it to capture some sort of "zeitgeist."

Would anyone try to convince me that Google Trends is anything but stupid? Does it really offer insight into our concerns, curiosities, and values? Can someone out there construct a responsible and interesting table using Google Trends?

Here are some other stupid searches:

I am nowhere close to being "bigger than Jesus."

And if you ever wondered about that eternal question the kids asked in Stand by Me: "Who would win, Superman or Mighty Mouse?" Superman. Big time.

And, if you are fan of Broadway musicals, I am sure you have always wondered:

Oh, and the Hilton family members are BIG donors to McCain as well!

Unfortunately, as The New York Times explained in April, the legitimate corporate-developed version seems far inferior to most users. NPR tells more about the problems with the official software developed by Electronic Arts and about user revolts taking place all over the web here.

Of course, it has been a tough year of board game litigiousness. The most bizarre case may be the one faced by NYU professor Alex Galloway, who was challenged by the widow of French Situationist Guy Debord in a battle over the rights to the free online game Kriegspiel.

Via the ACSBlog.

The Decline of Localist Broadcasting Policies
July 18th, 2008 by Ed Felten

Public policy, in the U.S. at least, has favored localism in broadcasting: programming on TV and radio stations is supposed to be aimed, at least in part, at the local community. Two recent events call this policy into question.

The first event is the debut of the Pandora application on the iPhone. Pandora is a personalized “music radio” service delivered over the Internet. You tell it which artists and songs you like, and it plays you the requested songs, plus other songs it thinks are similar. You can rate the songs it plays, thereby giving it more information about what you like. It’s not a jukebox — you can’t find out in advance what it’s going to play, and there are limits on how often it can play songs from the same artist or album — but it’s more personalized than broadcast radio. (Last.fm offers a similar service, also available now on the iPhone.)

Now you can get Pandora on your iPhone, so you can listen to Pandora on a battery-powered portable device that fits in your pocket — like a twenty-first century version of the old transistor radios, only this one plays a station designed especially for you. Why listen to music on broadcast radio when you can listen to this? Or to put it another way: why listen to music targeted at people who live near you, when you can listen to music targeted at people with tastes like yours?

The second event I’ll point to is a statement from a group of Christian broadcasters, opposing a proposed FCC rule that would require radio stations to have local advisory boards that tell them how to tailor programming to the local community. [hat tip: Ars Technica] The Christian stations say, essentially, that their community is defined by a common interest rather than by geography.

Many people are like the Pandora or Christian radio listeners, in wanting to hear content aimed at their interests rather than just their location. Public policy ought to recognize this and give broadcasters more latitude to find their own communities rather than defining communities only by geography.

Now I’m not saying that their shouldn’t be local programming, or that people shouldn’t care what is happening in their neighborhood. Most people care a lot about local issues and want some local programming. The local community is one of their communities of interest, but it’s not the only one. Let some stations serve local communities while others serve non-local communities. As long as there is demand for local programming — as there surely will be — the market will provide it, and new technologies will help people get it.

Indeed, one of the benefits of new technologies is that they let people stay in touch with far-away localities. When we were living in Palo Alto during my sabbatical, we wanted to stay in touch with events in the town of Princeton because we were planning to move back after a year. Thanks to the Web, we could stay in touch with both Palo Alto and Princeton. The one exception was that we couldn’t get New Jersey TV stations. We had satellite TV, so the nearby New York and Philadelphia stations were literally being transmitted to our Palo Alto house; but the satellite TV company said the FCC wouldn’t let us have the station because localist policy wanted us to watch San Francisco stations instead. Localist policy, perversely, pushed us away from local programming and kept us out of touch.

New technologies undermine the rationale for localist policies. It’s easier to get far-away content now — indeed the whole notion that content is bound to a place is fading away. With access to more content sources, there are more possible venues for local programming, making it less likely that local programming will be unavailable because of the whims or blind spots of a few station owners. It’s getting easier and cheaper to gather and distribute information, so more people have the means to produce local programming. In short, we’re looking at a future with more non-local programming and more local programming.

I have to disagree with Ed on this. I will tell y'all why soon.

Ariel on July 24, 2008 3:53 PM:

i remember i was drunk and looking for porn